/  M 


tibrarjp  of ^he  trheolo^ical  ^tmxmxy 

PRINCETON   .   NEW  JERSEY 


PRESENTED  BY 


Dr.  Earl  A.  Pope 

Manson  Professor  of  Bible 

Lafayette  College 


BX  7233 

.B4 

S45 

1868 

V.2 

Beecher , 

Henry 

Ward, 

1813- 

1887. 

Sermons 

C  ''<■■- 


/y<^ 


^r? 


^  .^^...Ju  ^^-^^-"-x^ 


SERMONS 


HENRY   WARD    BEECHER, 


PLYMOUTH  CHURCH,  BROOKLYN. 


SELECTED  FROM  PUBLISHED  AND  UNPUBLISHED  DISCOURSES, 
AND  REVISED  BY  THEIR  AUTHOR. 


IN    TWO    VOLUMES. 

Vol.    II. 


LIBRARY  OF  PRIN:^;  TON 


.  CAL  SEMINARY 


NEW    YORK: 
HARPER   &    BROTHERS,   PUBLISHERS, 

FRANKLIN     SQUARE. 
1868. 


Eutered,  according  to  Act  of  Congress,  in  the  year  18G8,  by 

Harper  &  Brothers, 

In  the  Clerk's  Office  of  the  District  Court  of  the  United  States  for  the 
Southern  District  of  New  York. 


CONTENTS. 


SERMON  PAGE 

I.  Christian  Waiting  (Psalm  xxxvii.,  3-9) 9 

11.  The  Incaknation  of  Christ  (Heb.,  ii.,  14-18) 35 

m.  Visions  (Acts,  xxvi. ,  19) 59 

IV.  The  Immutability   of   God,  Interpreted  and  Applied 

(Heb.,  xiii,,  8) 87 

V.  The  Intercession  of  Christ  (Heb.,  vii.,  25) 109 

VI.  Love,  the  Fulfilling  of  the  Law  (Matt.,  xxii.,  34-40)..  185 
VII.  Preaching  Jesus  Christ  and  Him  Crucified  (1  Cor.,ii., 

1,2) 1G5 

Vm.  Preaching  Jjesus  Christ  and  Him  Crucified  (1  Cor.,  ii., 

1,  2)— Continued 189 

IX.  The  Long-suffering  of  God  (1  Tim.,  L,  16) 205 

X.  The  Patience  of  God  (Mic,  to.,  18.) 223 

XL  God's  Husbandry  (1  Cor.,  iii.,  9) 243 

XII.  The  Ministration  of  Suffering  (Eev., -vdi.,  14) 261 

XIII.  The  Necessity  of  Correct  Belief  (2  Tim.,  iii.,  14-17)...  283 

XIV.  Christianity  a  Vital  Force  (John,  vi. ,  63) 301 

XV.  Old  Age  (Ecclesiastes,  xii,  1) 321 

XVI.  The  Teaching  of  Events  (Acts,  xxi. ,  14) 345 

XVII.  Christian  Character  (John,  i.,  12, 13) 365 

XVIIL  The  Second  Incarnation  (Eph.,  i.,  22,  23) 387 

XIX.  Grace  Abounding  (Eph.,  iii.,  20,^21) 407 

XX.  The  Eich  Pool  (Luke,  xii.,  16-21) 425 

XXI.  Jacob's  Ladder  (Genesis,  xxnii,  10-13) 443 

XXn.  The  State  of  Christianity  To-day  (Romans, -viii.,  3) 4C1 


I. 


diristinn  ^Uniting. 


Preached  in  Zion  Church,  Charleston,  S.  C,  April  i6,  1865. 

[Mr.  Beecher,  who  went  X.o  Charleston  to  deliver  the  address  on  the  occasion  of  raising 
the  flag  over  Fort  Sumter,  gave  subsequently  to  his  own  Church  the  following  account  of  the 
circumstances  under  which  this  discourse  was  preached. 

"  There  was  one  church  in  which  I  ministered  myself.  It  was  my  privilege  to  preach  in 
Charleston  on  Sunday  morning  at  Zion  Church — the  African  church.  About  three  thou- 
sand people  were  there.  Enough  of  them  were  white  to  say  that  there  were  white  people 
there.  There  were  a  number  of  officers,  and  a  few  strangers  present ;  but  the  great  body 
of  the  house  was  filled  with  the  intelligent  part  of  the  colored  population  of  Charleston.  I 
know  not  that  I  shall  ever  preach  with  such  sensations  again.  I  have  preached  about  slaves 
and  slavery;  but  to  stand  in  the  midst  of  such  a  great  audience,  and  feel,  "  Here  they  are, 
and  they  are  now  come  to  life  and  to  light,"  struck  me  through  with  such  sensations  as  I 
never  had  before. 

"  One  little  incident  was  peculiarly  charming  to  my  feelings.  I  gave  out,  for  the  second 
hjTtm, 

'  Daughter  of  Zion,  from  the  dust 
Exalt  thy  fallen  head.' 

"  You  will  find  it  to  be  an  almost  perfect  description  of  Charleston  itsflf.  There  sat,  four 
or  five  pews  in  front  of  me,  seven  or  eight  old  men  that  attempted  to  choir  it — for  they  were 
going  to  be  respectable,  and  sing  as  white  folks  do.  I  did  not  go  to  hear  them  sing  so  :  I 
went  to  hear  black  folks  sing  in  their  own  way,  and  was  thirsty  for  the  old  negro  melodies, 
the  wild,  wailing,  half-chant  tunes  which  I  had  heard  so  much  about.  But  I  got  only  church 
music  in  the  first  singing.     I  was  obliged  to  line  out  the  words.     I  repeated  again, 

*  Daughter  oi  Zion,  from  the  dust 
Exalt  thy  fallen  head,* 

and  looked  down  to  see  if  they  were  going  to  sing ;  and,  while  these  men  were  getting  ready, 
there  broke  out  on  my  left  the  voice  of  a  young  maiden,  apparently  twelve  or  thirteen  years 
of  age,  in  one  of  their  characteristic  plantation  melodies.  She  went  through  the  first  line 
before  another  voice  was  heard.  Every  body  looked  at  his  neighbor  in  surprise.  On  the 
next  line  a  few  voices  joined  hers.  And  on  the  next  about  a  third  of  the  audience  took  up 
the  hymn  and  sang  it  to  the  end.  I  know  not  whether  this  young  maiden  thought  that  I 
had  called  her  when  I  said  '  Daughter  of  Zion'  [laughter],  but  the  style  of  singing  in  which 
she  led  off  was  just  what  I  wanted  to  hear."] 


Cheistian  Waiting. 


"  Trust  in  the  Lord,  and  do  good ;  so  shalt  thou  dwell  in  the  land,  and  veri- 
ly thou  shalt  be  fed.  Delight  thyself  also  in  the  Lord,  and  he  shall  give 
thee  the  desires  of  thine  heart.  Commit  thy  way  unto  the  Lord  ;  trust 
also  in  him ;  and  he  shall  bring  it  to  pass.  And  he  shall  bring  forth  thy 
righteousness  as  the  light,  and  thy  judgment  as  the  noon-day.  Kest  in 
the  Lord,  and  wait  patiently  for  him :  fret  not  thyself  because  of  him  who 
prospereth  in  his  way,  because  of  the  man  who  bringeth  wicked  devices 
to  pass.  Cease  from  anger,  and  forsake  -ivrath  ;  fret  not  thyself  in  any 
wise  to  do  evil.  For  evil  doers  shall  be  cut  otf ;  but  those  that  wait 
upon  the  Lord,  they  shall  inherit  the  earth. " — Psalm  xxxvii. ,  3-9. 

When  you  have  nothing  to  do,  and  there  is  nothing  to 
produce  anxiety,  it  is  easy  to  wait — for  it  is  laziness  ;  and  all 
men  are  apt  by  nature  to  be  lazy.  But  when  there  is  any 
thing  that  you  do  care  about,  and  that  you  have  set  your 
heart  upon,  it  is  very  hard  to  wait,  especially  if  the  thing  does 
not  come  as  soon  as  you  expect  it  to.  Waiting  is  easy  when 
it  is  sinful,  and  hard  when  it  is  a  duty.  The  Bible  is  full  both 
of  instances  of  patient  waiting,  and  of  exhortations  and  expla- 
nations respecting  the  duty  and  benefit  of  waiting — of  wait- 
ing, not  because  you  can  not  help  yourself;  of  waiting,  not 
because  you  can  not  do  any  thing  else,  but  of  waiting  in  the 
sense  of  waiting  on  God ;  of  waiting,  because  you  believe  that 
God  governs  in  this  world ;  that  he  will  bring  to  pass,  in  his 
own  time,  righteousness,  justice,  and  truth,  and  that,  there- 
fore, you  can  afibrd  to  wait  as  long  as  he  will  have  you. 
That  is  the  ground  of  true  Christian  waiting. 

We  are  very  much  hindered  in  our  Christian  duty  of  pa- 
tient waiting  by  the  habit  of  looking  at  things  in  their  mi- 
nute parts,  each  particular  day,  without  considering  that  ev- 
ery thing  that  hajspens  in  this  world  is  part  of  a  great  plan 


12  Christian  \Yaiting. 

of  God  that  runs  through  all  time,  culminating  in  eternity, 
and  that  we  are  to  regard  daily  events  as  only  elements  of 
greater  events  that  require  long  periods  for  their  consumma- 
tion. 

What  is  God  doing  in  this  world  ?  By  day  and  by  night, 
in  light  and  in  darkness,  by  good  and  by  evil,  by  his  friends 
and  by  his  enemies,  God  is  building  up  a  kingdom  among 
men.  He  is  laying  the  foundations  of  it  as  broad  as  the  earth, 
and  he  will  carry  up  the  superstructure  as  high  as  the  heav- 
ens. God  is  the  architect.  God  is  superintending  the  work, 
and  all  men  are  his  workmen.  There  are  many  men  who  are 
glad  to  help  God  build  this  world-kingdom  of  righteousness, 
and  who  do  it  on  purpose ;  but  there  are  millions  and  mil- 
lions of  men  who  think,  while  they  ai-e  hewing,  and  sawing, 
and  shaping  wood,  and  quarrying  and  chiseling  stone,  and 
working,  that  they  are  building  a  house  for  themselves,  and 
that  they  are  carrying  out  their  own  plans ;  while  God,  that 
sits  far  above  all  men,  sees  that  they  are  working  for  him,  and 
that  the  materials  with  which  many  of  them  meant  to  build 
their  own  house  are  going  into  the  foundations  of  the  house 
that  he  is  building.  He  sees  that  all  those  evil  influences  by 
which  men  are  seeking  to  defeat  righteousness  and  overthrow 
justice  in  this  world  are  made  in  the  end  to  promote  right- 
eousness and  justice. 

This  kingdom  of  God  is  not  a  kingdom  that  you  can  han- 
dle. It  is  not  a  kingdom  with  an  earthly  king  in  it.  It  is 
not  a  kingly  city  whose  walls  are  of  stone  and  mortar.  It  is 
a  kingdom  of  righteousness.  It  is  that  kingdom  which  the 
Master  says  "  cometh  not  with  observation."  It  is  not  phys- 
ical. Wlien  a  man  reaches  out  his  hand,  there  are  two  things 
concerned  in  the  act:  there  is  an  inward  power  that  says 
"  Do  it,"  and  there  is  the  outside  hand  that  does  it.  There 
is  an  unseen  influence  on  the  brain — the  mind,  the  will ;  and 
there  is  the  visible  object,  the  hand. 

Every  one  sees  in  this  illustration  the  difierence  between 
spirit  and  matter.     The  mind  is  one  part  of  a  man's  being, 


Christian  Waiting.  13 

and  the  body  is  another.  You  can  see  the  body.  That 
which  governs  it  you  can  not  see.  You  can  not  see  a 
thought,  though  you  can  see  what  thought  brings  to  pass. 
You  can  not  see  a  feeling,  though  you  can  see  the  effect 
which  that  feeling  produces.  You  can  not  see  justice, 
though  you  can  see  what  justice  does. 

God,  then,  is  building  up  a  kingdom  that  is  invisible ;  a 
kingdom  that  can  not  be  discerned  by  the  outward  man ;  a 
spiritual  kingdom  of  holy  thoughts,  of  pure  feelings,  of  faith, 
of  hope,  of  righteousness.  This  kingdom  advances  little  by 
little.  It  is  carried  forward  by  a  myriad  of  different  causes. 
God  administers  it  himself,  and  he  means  that  it  shall  be  per- 
fected. He  is  determined  that  the  whole  world  shall  be  fill- 
ed with  his  glory,  and  that  all  mankind  shall  be  righteous. 

This  kingdom  progresses  very  slowly.  It  meets  with 
great  opposition — so  great  that  sometimes  you  can  not  tell 
whether  it  is  going  backward  or  forward.  Unless  a  man  has 
a  great  deal  of  faith,  and  a  great  deal  of  experience,  he  will 
often  be  placed  in  circumstances  where  it  will  seem  to  him  as 
though  every  thing  was  retrograding ;  as  though  men  were 
growing  worse  and  worse ;  as  though  injustice  was  increas- 
ing, and  righteousness  was  diminishing  ;  as  though  those  who 
strove  to  be  good  were  of  no  account,  and  only  the  evil  were 
honored.  But  God,  that  is  building  this  great  kingdom,  sees 
that  though,  on  account  of  its  magnitude,  it  is  slowly  advanc- 
ing, yet  it  is  advancing  surely. 

You  can  not  build  a  great  house  so  quick  as  you  can  a 
small  one.  You  can  not  buUd  a  city  so  quick  as  you  can  a 
hut  or  a  hovel.  If  God  was  going  to  build  his  kingdom  in 
one  family,  he  might  do  it  quickly ;  but  as  he  is  to  do  it  in 
all  the  families  of  every  country,  the  work  is  so  vast  that  it 
can  not  be  done  in  a  day,  nor  in  a  year,  nor  in  a  hundred 
years,  nor  in  many  rolling  ages.  It  takes  time  to  build 
things  that  are  to  be  so  well  built  and  so  glorious  as  God's 
kingdom  will  be  when  it  is  completed.  And  we  are  livino- 
in  an  age  that  resists  this  work  of  God — sometimes  on  pur- 
pose, and  sometimes  not  knowing  what  it  does. 


14  Christian  Waiting. 

Man  groTVS,  first,  as  an  animal;  next,  as  a  social  being; 
and,  lastly,  as  one  having  a  spiritual  and  religious  nature. 
And  as  it  is  with  individual  men,  so  it  is  with  the  world  at 
large.  At  first  the  nations  of  the  earth  are  nations  of  sav- 
ages; then  they  begin  to  be  half  civilized;  then  they  become 
more  fully  civilized;  then  in  some  degree  Christianized. 
But  their  laws  are  still  imperfect,  and  their  customs  are  yet 
crooked.  Selfishness  reigns  on  every  hand,  and  the  world  is 
full  of  permitted  wickedness.  There  remain  to  be  thrown 
out  of  the  kingdom  of  Christ  many  antagonistic  influences, 
such  as  pride,  lust,  impurity,  and  corruption.  But  this  king- 
dom works  its  way,  little  by  little,  through  laws,  and  cus- 
toms, and  antagonistic  influences,  and  will  go  on  working  its 
way  through  them,  till,  by-and-by,  righteousness  shall  become 
victorious.     It  moves  slowly,  but  certainly. 

You  tell  your  child  that  this  pine-tree  out  here  in  the 
sandy  field  is  one  day  going  to  be  as  large  as  that  great  so- 
norous pine  that  sings  to  every  wind  in  the  wood.  The 
child,  incredulous,  determines  to  watch  and  see  whether  the 
field  pine  really  does  grow  and  become  as  large  as  you  say  it 
will.  So,  the  next  morning,  he  goes  out  and  takes  a  look  at 
it,  and  comes  back  and  says, "  It  has  not  grown  a  particle." 
At  night  he  goes  out  and  looks  at  it  again,  and  comes  back 
and  says, "  It  has  not  grown  a  bit."  The  next  week  he  goes 
out,  and  looks  at  it  again,  and  comes  back  and  says,  "  It  has 
not  grown  any  yet.  Father  said  it  would  be  as  large  as  the 
pine-tree  in  the  wood,  but  I  do  not  see  any  likelihood  of  its 
becoming  so." 

How  long  did  it  take  that  pine-tree  in  the  wood  to  grow  ? 
Two  hundred  years.  The  men  who  lived  when  it  began  to 
grow  have  been  buried,  and  generations  besides  have  come 
and  gone  since  then. 

And  do  you  suppose  that  God's  kingdom  is  going  to  grow 
so  that  you  can  look  at  it  and  see  that  it  has  grown  during  any 
particular  day  ?  You  can  not  see  it  grow.  All  around  you 
are  things  that  are  growing,  but  that  you  can  not  see  grow. 


Christian  Waiting.  15 

And  if  it  is  so  with  trees,  and  things  that  spring  out  of  the 
ground,  how  much  more  is  it  so  with  the  kingdom  of  God ! 
That  kingdom  is  advancing  surely,  though  it  advances  slow- 
ly, and  though  it  is  invisible  to  us. 

You  will  remember  our  Master's  beautiiiil  parable,  where 
he  says, "  The  kingdom  of  heaven  is  like  unto  leaven,  which 
a  woman  took  and  hid  in  three  measures  of  meal,  till  the 
whole  was  leavened."  I  suppose  you  know  what  that  means. 
I  go  into  your  kitchen,  where  you  are  baking  bread,  and  ask, 
"  What  is  that  you  are  stirring  into  that  flour  ?"  You  say 
"It  is  yeast."  I  ask,  "What  is  it  for?"  You  say  "It  is  to 
raise  the  bread."  I  imagine  that  it  is  to  raise  it  in  a  way 
that  shall  be  perceptible  to  my  senses,  and  say,  "  Let  me  see 
it  do  it."  You  set  the  bread  away  in  a  warm  place,  or,  at  the 
South,  in  a  cool  place,  if  you  can  find  one,  and  you  say, "  Now 
it  will  rise."  After  watching  it  closely  for  a  while,  I  say  to 
you,  "  r  do  not  see  that  it  has  risen  at  all."  You  say, "  Bless 
you,  my  child,  you  can  not  see  it  rise !"  I  go  away,  and  stay 
till  I  think  it  will  have  come  up,  if  there  is  any  such  thing  as 
its  coming  up,  and  then  go  back,  but  I  can  not  see  that  it  has 
undergone  any  change.  I  wait,  and  wait,  and  wait,  and  at 
last  say, "  I  do  not  believe  it  is  going  to  rise."  And  you 
say, "  It  has  risen  already,"  and  tear  it  open ;  and  lo !  it  is 
full  of  holes;  and  you  say,  "Now  do  not  you  believe  that 
it  has  risen  ?  It  has  been  rising  all  the  time,  only  you  could 
not  see  it  rise." 

Christ  says  that  his  kingdom  is  just  like  that.  It  is  a 
great  kingdom,  which  extends  all  over  the  world,  and  into 
which  he  has  put  the  leaven  of  divine  grace.  That  grace  is 
like  yeast,  and  it  works  in  this  kingdom  of  Christ.  You  can 
not  see  it,  even  if  you  watch  for  it ;  but  there  it  is ;  and  if, 
after  a  while,  you  go  and  look  at  it,  you  will  be  convinced 
that  it  has  been  working,  by  the  results  which  it  has  pro- 
duced. You  will  find  that  things  have  been  done,  though 
you  could  not  see  them  done.  Men  are  becoming  better  the 
world  over,  though  you  can  not  trace  the  process  by  which 


16  Christian  Waiting. 

they  are  becoming  better.  Chi'ist's  kingdom  goes  forward 
from  age  to  age,  though  you  can  not  discern  the  steps  by 
which  it  is  going  forward.  While  men,  as  individuals,  pass 
off  from  the  stage  of  life,  God's  work  does  not  stop. 

When  men  make  a  chain,  they  make  the  links  separately, 
and  join  the  second  to  the  first,  the  thu*d  to  the  second,  the 
fourth  to  the  third,  and  so  on  till  the  chain  is  completed ;  and 
it  is  good  for  nothing  if  any  link  is  left  out. 

We  are  links  of  that  chain  which  God  is  making.  Here  is 
a  man  that  undertakes  a  good  work  in  this  world,  and  car- 
ries it  forward  a  certain  distance,  and  then  dies.  But  that 
wox'k  does  not  stop.  Another  man  takes  it  up  where  he  left 
it,  and  carries  it  forward  still  farther,  and  then  he  dies.  An- 
other man  takes  it  up  w^here  he  left  it,  and  carries  it  forward 
farther  yet.  And  so  on,  this  one,  and  that  one,  and  others 
that  follow  them,  are  links  of  an  endless  chain  that  shall 
reach  to  the  very  heaven. 

For  instance,  you  want  to  teach  men  to  read.  There  were 
those  that  lived  before  you,  who  made  types  and  printer's 
ink.  They  did  their  work  and  died.  Others  took  it  up 
where  they  left  it.  Books  began  to  be  manufactured.  Print- 
ing-presses were  brought  into  requisition.  These  men  work- 
ed, but  did  not  know  what  they  were  working  for.  They 
died,  and  you  came  into  active  life.  You  found  the  instru- 
ments for  your  work  already  at  hand.  Books  !  It  took  ages 
to  produce  them.  There  may  be  a  hundred  generations  of 
lives  in  one  book.  And  yet,  when  you  want  to  open  schools, 
you  find  books  as  abundant  and  as  cheap  as  bread. 

Thus  one  set  of  men,  not  knowing  what  they  do,  bring 
dowm  the  work  of  God's  kingdom  to  a  given  point ;  others, 
not  knowing  what  they  do,  bring  it  down  still  farther ;  and 
it  goes  on,  stretching  out,  and  stretching  out,  and  will  not 
stop  until  it  is  consummated.  There  is  a  current  setting 
straight  on  down  through  the  ages.  Every  successive  jDeriod 
of  civilization  has  gone  up  higher.  The  old  Oriental  civiliza- 
tion, Roman  civilization,  the  Middle-Age  civilization,  and 


Christian  Waiting.  17 

modern  civilization,  are  steps,  one  rising  above  another. 
There  is  a  tendency  in  the  affairs  of  the  world  to  go  on  to 
perfetion.  God's  Bible  predicts  that  the  time  shall  come 
when  the  knowledge  of  the  Lord  shall  fill  the  earth  as  the 
waters  fill  the  sea ;  and  that  time  is  coming. 

Here,  then,  is  the  foundation  of  our  faith,  our  hope,  our  pa- 
tient waiting.  We  are  to  rest  on  the  fact  that  God  is  carry- 
ing on  a  work  in  this  world ;  that  he  never  forgets  that  work ; 
that  he  never  lets  it  lag  or  linger ;  that  it  is  ever  going  for- 
ward, though  we  may  not  see  it  advance,  and  though  it  may 
seem  to  be  receding.  God  has  declared  that  every  thing 
shall  work  together  for  good  to  them  that  are  his.  And  the 
Christian  heart,  relying  on  this  declaration,  says,  "If  this  was 
a  world  that  had  no  God,  I  should  be  in  utter  despair ;  but 
it  is  not.  Though  I  am  in  trouble,  and  though  relief  does  not 
come  as  soon  as  I  could  wish  it  might,  there  is  a  God  that 
knows  every  thing,  and  that  looks  after  the  welfare  of  every 
human  being ;  and  I  put  my  trust  in  him.  He  is  carrying  on 
his  work.  It  will  certainly  be  finished.  When,  therefore, 
my  Bible  says  '  Wait  patiently,'  there  is  good  reason  in  it." 

I  proceed  to  make  some  applications  founded  on  this  gen- 
eral view : 

1.  There  are  many  men  who  do  not  believe  in  these 
tioiths.  They  can  not  see  any  sense  in  them.  When  we 
talk  about  schools,  and  churches,  and  orphan  asylums,  and 
benevolent  associations,  and  philanthropic  measures,  and  the 
glorious  future  which  such  instrumentalities  are  helping  to 
hasten  on,  they  sit  by  and  sneer,  and  croak,  and  say,  "  Great 
expectations  !  Fanaticism !  What  fools,  to  suppose  that 
you  can  make  any  thing  out  of  such  stuff  as  men !  Look  at 
mankind.  See  how  men  deal  with  each  other.  Even  what 
are  called  Christians  jou-  will  never  trust  out  of  your  sight. 
I  have  seen  your  ministers,  your  churches,  your  missionary 
societies,  your  temperance  societies,  and  your  schools  at- 
tempting to  work  up  the  poor  trash  into  something  great 
and  noble,  but  it  is  all  folly.  You  can  not  do  any  thing  of 
the  kind." 
H— B 


18  Christian  Waiting. 

These  are  shallow  men.  They  do  not  look  very  deeply 
into  affairs  !  There  are  thousands  of  them.  They  are  men 
without  faith.  They  are  men  without  any  belief  in  the  over- 
ruling providence  of  God.  They  judge  of  things  simply  by 
the  surface.  They  are  men  that,  if  they  had  just  come  to 
America,  and  found  a  chestnut-tree,  and  seen  the  burs,  could 
not  be  convinced  that  chestnuts  were  good  for  any  thing, 
and  that  would  say,  "  Who  would  eat  such  prickly  things  as 
those  ?"  But  Avhen  the  frost  touches  the  bur,  it  opens  a  case 
with  a  satin  lining  as  fine  as  that  of  any  lady's  dressing-case, 
and  discloses  a  little  nut  that  has  been  swelling  and  ripening 
for  many  a  day ;  and  I  never  saw  a  man  that  would  not  eat 
the  chestnut  when  it  was  out  of  the  bur. 

There  are  many  men  that,  because  the  beginnings  of 
Christ's  kingdom  in  this  world  are  rude ;  because  some  that 
profess  to  belong  to  that  kingdom  are  traitors ;  because  some 
are  backsliders ;  because  some  are  insincere  and  hypocritical 
persons ;  and  because  the  processes  of  the  divine  work  are  car- 
ried on  through  circuits  too  wide  for  them  to  understand, 
say,  "  It  is  folly  to  be  talking  about  advancing  the  world.  It 
is  a  poor,  mean  world,  and  we  must  make  the  best  of  it.  Eat, 
drink,  and  be  merry,  O  soul,  for  to-morrow  you  shall  die." 
Yes,  and  perish !  For  God  sits  in  judgment,  and  though  the 
day  of  his  coming  seems  to  be  long  delayed,  it  is  surely  draw- 
ing nigh ;  and  though  scoffers  arise,  "  walking  after  their  own 
lusts,  and  saying.  Where  is  the  promise  of  his  coming  ?  for, 
since  the  fathers  fell  asleep,  all  things  continue  as  they  were 
from  the  beginning  of  the  creation,"  nevertheless  "  the  heav- 
ens and  the  earth  are  reserved  unto  fire  against  the  day  of 
judgment  and  perdition  of  ungodly  men,"  while,  with  strong 
assurance  of  faith,  resting  on  the  pledged  word  of  God,  we 
look  for  the  "  new  heavens  and  a  new  earth  wherein  dwell- 
eth  i-ighteousness." 

2.  Consider  the  folly  of  the  discouragement  which  many 
feel  because  men  are  so  imperfect,  particularly  those  who  go 
from  a  higher  to  a  lower  state  of  society.     In  the  army  the 


Christian  Waiting.  19 

soldier  learns  to  put  up  with  things  that  are  worse  than  those 
which  he  has  been  accustomed  to,  No  soldier,  when  he  is  on 
a  raid,  thinks  of  having  a  parlor  like  his  mother's,  or  of  sitting 
down  in  a  kitchen  before  a  fire  when  he  is  wet  and  cold,  as 
he  has  often  done  in  his  father's  house.  He  is  contented  if 
he  can  find  a  dry  spot  under  a  tree  to  lie  down  on.  He 
makes  up  his  mind  that  he  must  adapt  himself  to  his  circum- 
stances. But  many  men  go  down  into  states  of  society  very 
difierent  from  those  to  which  they  have  been  used,  and,  be- 
cause there  are  not  men  enough  to  do  the  work ;  because  some 
men  are  clumsy  and  rude ;  because  some  are  deceitful  and 
dishonest ;  because  men  are  just  what  they  always  have  been, 
they  are  disgusted.  They  can  not  get  along  with  the  imper- 
fections that  they  meet  on  every  hand.  They  have  no  pa- 
tience with  them.  They  can  not  wait  for  a  better  condition 
of  things  to  come  about  through  the  processes  of  time  and 
divine  power.  To  such  men  the  word  is, "  Wait  on  the  Lord ; 
wait  patiently ;  and  by-and-by  he  shall  give  you  the  desire 
of  your  heart." 

There  is  no  use  of  our  being  in  any  more  haste  than  God. 
He  goes  fast  enough.  He  will  not  let  you  go  any  faster  than 
he  goes.  And  who  are  you,  that  cry  because  you  can  not  run 
before  God  ?  Be  sure  that  you  keep  up  with  him ;  be  sure 
that  when  he  takes  a  step  you  step  too,  and  step  lively,  and 
then  you  will  not  need  to  have  any  concern. 

3.  Consider  the  folly  of  envying  wicked  men  when  they 
are  in  power,  and  thinking  that  perhaps  it  is  worth  while  to 
be  as  wicked  as  they  are. 

If  the  senior  ofiicer  is  a  drinking,  swearing,  unscrupulous 
man,  many  young  men  under  him  say  to  themselves,  "  Have 
I  not  been  tied  up  a  little  too  tight  ?  Did  father  and  mother 
know  as  much  as  I  thought  they  did  ?  Here  are  men  that 
are  educated,  that  hold  high  positions,  and  that  are  confess- 
edly men  of  ability  and  worth,  and  do  not  they  drink  ?  Do 
not  they  swear?  Are  they  not  unscrupulous?  And  what 
am  I,  that  I  should  set  myself  up  against  them,  and  judge 


20  Christian  Waiting. 

them  to  be  wrong?  They  rise,  and  become  distinguished, 
and  every  body  helps  them,  while  the  man  that  is  conscien- 
tious in  his  habits,  and  is  modest  and  retiring,  is  helped  by 
nobody,  and  stays  where  he  is,  and  is  unknown.  Those  men 
that  are  of  a  reckless,  dare-devil  nature  are  the  men  that  pros- 
per and  get  along.  And,  after  all,  it  seems  to  me  that  it  is 
best  that  a  man  should  not  be  too  conscientious." 

This  is  the  very  thing  that  the  psalmist  says  you  must  not 
do.  "  Fret  not  thyself  in  any  wise  to  do  evil,  neither  be 
thou  envious  against  workers  of  iniquity."  Their  prosperity, 
says  the  psalm,  in  effect,  is  at  the  beginning,  and  not  at  the 
end.  The  prosjDerity  of  wicked  men  is  like  opium-eating. 
When  men  eat  opium,  they  at  first  experience  feelings  of  ec- 
stasy, and  they  see  visions,  and  dream  dreams,  and  have  a 
glorious  hour  or  two;  but  when  they  have  gone  through 
these  pleasant  experiences,  then  what  have  they  ?  Purgatory 
on  earth !  The  after  part  is  hideous  to  them  in  the  propor- 
tion in  which  the  fore  part  was  agreeable. 

Wicked  men  do  prosper  for  a  little  while ;  but,  as  sure  as 
God  lives,  in  the  end  they  shall  have  their  just  reward.  If  you 
consider  the  whole  of  life  from  end  to  end,  then  truth,  and 
honor,  and  purity,  and  justice,  and  fidelity  pay.  If  you  want 
to  grow  quickly,  you  can  grow  quickly  by  wickedness,  but 
you  will  not  last.  If  you  want  to  grow  so  as  to  last,  you 
must  adhere  to  integrity,  and  you  must  be  contented  to  grow 
slowly,  if  God  ordains  it.  You  can  grow  a  mushroom  or  a 
toad-stool  in  one  night,  if  you  have  a  dunghill  large  enough ; 
but  to  grow  an  oak-tree,  that  shall  last  for  generations,  re- 
quires vastly  more  time.  And  if  you  want  men  that  shall 
last,  you  must  wait  till  they  can  be  built  up  solidly  by  good 
conduct ;  by  confidence  inspired  by  good  conduct ;  in  other 
words,  by  being  tried. 

One  ship  is  as  good  as  another  in  the  harbor.  It  is  out- 
side of  the  harbor  that  the  comparative  merits  of  different 
vessels  are  made  to  appear.  There  their  qualities,  whether 
superior  or  inferior,  show  themselves.     It  is  what  ships  do 


Christian  Waiting.  21 

on  the  sea  that  determines  that  one  is  better  or  worse  than 
another. 

And  as  with  ships,  so  with  men.  Two  men  start  about 
alike  on  the  morn  of  life.  They  go  along,  at  first,  about  to- 
gether. But  follow  them  five  or  ten  years,  and  about  the 
fifth,  the  sixth,  or  the  seventh  year,  the  one — a  man  of  pleas- 
ure, a  godless  man,  a  man  that  does  not  believe  in  a  divine 
supervision  of  the  afiairs  of  this  world — begins  to  degenerate; 
while  the  other — a  sober.  Christian  man,  who  believes  that 
God  controls  the  world  and  all  that  are  in  it — in  the  begin- 
ning lays  his  foundation,  going  down  so  deep  that  he  seems 
for  a  time  to  burrow  like  a  marmot ;  but  then,  little  by  little, 
he  begins  to  work  upward,  and  he  builds  so  that  every  hovir 
men  see  that  he  is  building  strongly  and  surely. 

Young  men,  you  who  are  under  circumstances  in  which 
the  bad  example  of  wicked  men  tempts  you,  do  not  be 
tempted  by  the  wickedness  of  any  body.  Do  not  covet  that 
prosperity  which  sin  brings.  It  will  be  overtaken  by  con- 
dign punishment.     In  the  end  it  will  have  its  due  reward. 

A  young  man  sits  at  the  table,  and  gratifies  his  appetite 
with  whatever  it  craves.  His  physician,  who  sits  by  his 
side,  says  to  him,  "  You  can  not  indulge  in  such  stimulating 
drinks  without  endangering  your  life."  "  Oh,"  says  the 
young  man, "  I  shall  feel  as  well  after  my  meal  as  you  will 
after  yours.  These  wines  and  liquors  do  me  good,  and  I 
shall  drink  them."  He  goes  on  disregardmg  his  physician's 
advice  day  after  day,  week  after  week,  and  month  after 
month,  and  then  comes  the  autumnal  fever,  and  he  is  pros- 
trated by  it,  and  others  catch  it  as  well  as  he ;  but  the  man 
that  would  not  take  stimulating  drinks  has  constitution 
enough  to  go  through  his  sickness,  while  the  man  that  per- 
sisted in  taking  them  breaks  down  under  the  pressure  of 
sickness,  and  dies,  because  he  has  destroyed  his  constitution 
by  indulgence.  And  so  that  which  the  doctor  foresees  comes 
to  pass. 

Now  what  the  doctor  tells  you  about  your  stomach,  I  tell 


22  Christian  Waiting. 

you  about  your  character.  If  you  want  to  build  so  as  to 
break  doAvn  even  in  this  life,  build  as  worldly  men  tell  you 
to ;  but  if  you  want  to  build  so  that  you  shall  abide  through- 
out eternity,  build  as  God  Almighty  tells  you  to. 

In  society  you  see  how  the  worst  men,  sometimes,  are  en- 
vied most.  They  live  m  splendid  houses.  They  have  con- 
vocations of  pleasure.  Pride  compasses  them  about  as  a 
chain.  Violence  covers  them  as  a  garment.  Their  eyes 
stand  out  with  fatness.  They  have  more  than  heart  could 
wish.  They  carry  their  head  loftily.  They  speak  wickedly 
concerning  oppression.  They  say,  "  How  doth  God  know  ? 
and  is  there  knowledge  in  the  Most  High  ?"  We  have  living 
examples  of  the  prosperity  of  wicked  men. 

But  what  says  the  psalmist?  "When  I  sought  to  know 
these  things,  they  were  too  painful  for  me  until  I  went 
into  the  sanctuary;  then  understood  I  their  end.  Surely 
thou  didst  set  them  in  slippery  places ;  thou  castedst  them 
down  into  destruction.  How  are  they  brought  into  deso- 
lation as  in  a  moment !  They  are  utterly  consumed  with 
terrors." 

Do  not  envy  wicked  men !  God  sends  thunderbolts  after 
them.  He  that  never  sleepeth  watches  them,  and  never  loses 
sight  of  them,  and  pursues  them,  and  will  overtake  them,  and, 
when  it  suits  his  purj)ose,  will  bring  ujion  them  his  retribu- 
tive judgments,  and  utterly  destroy  them.  Be  willing  to 
be  poor,  but  be  not  willing  to  be  dishonest.  Be  willing  to 
be  despised,  but  be  not  willing  to  be  corrupted.  Be  willing 
to  be  humble  here  for  the  sake  of  exaltation  hereafter. 

Did  you  ever  read  on  this  subject  the  remarkable  language 
of  James?  Some  of  you  have,  but  perhaps  others  of  you 
have  not.  I  will  read  a  part  of  the  fifth  chapter :  "  Go  to 
now,  ye  rich  men,  weep  and  howl  for  your  miseries  that  shall 
come  upon  you.  Your  riches  are  corrupted,  and  your  gar- 
ments are  moth-eaten ;  your  gold  and  silver  is  cankered,  and 
the  rust  of  them  shall  be  a  witness  against  you,  and  shall  eat 
your  flesh  as  it  were  fire.     Ye  have  heaped  treasure  together 


Christian  Waiting.  23 

for  the  last  days.  Behold  the  hire  of  the  laborers  who  have 
reaped  down  your  fields,  which  is  of  you  kept  back  by  fraud, 
crieth ;  and  the  cries  of  them  which  have  reaped  are  entered 
into  the  ears  of  the  Lord  of  Sabaoth.  Ye  have  lived  in  pleas- 
ure on  the  earth,  and  been  wanton ;  ye  have  nourished  your 
hearts  as  in  a  day  of  slaughter.  Ye  have  condemned  and 
killed  the  just,  and  he  doth  not  resist  you.  Be  patient,  there- 
fore, brethren,  unto  the  coming  of  the  Lord.  Behold,  the 
husbandman  waiteth  for  the  precious  fruit  of  the  earth,  and 
hath  long  patience  for  it  until  he  receive  the  early  and  latter 
rain.  Be  ye  also  patient ;  stablish  your  hearts,  for  the  com- 
ing of  the  Lord  draweth  nigh." 

Do  not  be  impatient.  Do  not  be  revengeful.  Leave  every 
thing  to  God.     He  will  take  care  of  you. 

4.  There  is  an  application  of  this  subject,  also,  to  those  that 
are  in  trouble.  I  had  almost  said,  Who  is  not  in  trouble  in 
these  times  of  war  and  confusion  ?  Is  there  a  man,  woman, 
or  child  in  the  land  down  from  whose  eyes  have  not  fallen  big 
tear-drops  ?  There  rises  up  through  the  silent  air  a  requiem 
of  sorrow  in  which  every  state  in  the  Union  joins  and  keeps 
time.  All  over  the  country  there  is  jubilee  in  the  grave- 
yards !  All  through  the  nation,  trouble,  sadness,  bereavement 
reigns  !  Some  of  it  I  know  not  how  one  can  bear.  If  I  had 
given  my  son  in  a  bad  cause,  and  lost  him,  and  lost  the  cause 
too,  the  mercy  of  God  might  perhaps  comfort  me  in  the  life  to 
come,  but  I  see  not  how  any  consolation  could  reach  me  in  this 
world.  But  if  any  man  has  been  called  to  suffer,  or  to  yield 
up  those  that  were  dear  to  him  as  his  own  flesh  and  blood  in 
the  noble  cause  of  justice  and  liberty,  he  has  not  lost  any 
thing  any  more  than  you  have  lost  your  corn  when  you  have 
planted  it.  You  planted  it  in  the  hope  that  it  would  sprout 
and  bring  forth  a  harvest.  And  our  dead,  that  have  died  for 
patriotic  reasons,  have  died  in  the  Lord,  and  come  forth 
again.  Oh,  how  dark  it  seems  when  they  are  cut  off! 
When  the  only  son  of  the  widowed  mother  is  taken  from  her; 
when,  in  the  hour  of  defeat,  he  goes  down  to  the  grave,  who 


24  Christian  Waiting. 

can  find  argument  of  consolation  ?  And  yet  there  are  con- 
siderations which  lessen  the  poignancy  of  grief,  where  the 
fallen  one  laid  down  his  life  in  the  faithful  service  of  his 
country. 

"When  that  noble  son  of  Massachusetts  led  the  colored  reg- 
iment in  their  charge  on  Fort  Wagner,  he  succeeded  appar- 
ently in  nothing  but  in  vindicating  the  heroism  of  the  black 
man.  When  there  he  fell,  and  was  buried  in  a  promiscuous 
heap  with  his  own  men,  the  whole  North  felt  the  shock. 
Yesterday,  as  I  walked  along  the  ramparts  beneath  which  his 
bones  lie — we  know  not  precisely  where — I  felt,  No  monarch 
in  Europe,  sitting  on  his  throne,  has  done  half  so  much  for  his 
kingdom  as  this  our  gallant  Shaw  has  done  for  his  country. 
We  planted  him,  and  God  has  given  him  a  glorious  resurrec- 
tion, and  by  his  example  he  is  exerting  a  tremendous  moral 
power  throughout  this  land.  He  is  a  host,  because  he  was  a 
martyr. 

And  that  young  Dahlgren,  who  brought  to  us  again  the 
very  ideas  of  chivalry,  and  who  sacrificed  himself,  though 
brutally  maltreated  by  his  enemies — is  he  dead  ?  Though 
dead,  he  yet  speaketh.  He  was  like  a  sacrifice  oflfered  upon 
the  altar,  and  God  will  be  more  projDitious  toward  this  na- 
tion for  his  blood  that  was  shed. 

Have  we  lost  our  men  because  God  has  added  them  to  the 
angel  host  ?  Ai'e  we  in  darkness  because  they  have  gone 
from  our  side  whom  God  wanted  in  the  higher  army  ?  They 
are  separated  from  their  earthly  generals,  but  they  bear  the 
banner  of  the  Lord  God  of  battles  in  the  realm  above. 

We  have  no  need  to  hurry.  Wait  patiently.  Trust  in 
God.     Do  not  give  up  your  faith. 

5.  I  have  a  word  for  my  colored  friends  that  are  present. 
You  certainly  have  learned  to  wait.  God  forbid  that  I  should 
say  a  word  to  inspire  in  you  vanity,  pride,  or  any  evil  feeling. 
The  devil  will  not  fail  to  tempt  you  in  a  great  many  ways. 
You  ought  to  be  most  watchful.  You  have  an  enemy  that 
is  like  a  roaring  lion,  going  about  seeking  whom  he  may  de- 


Christian  Waiting.  25 

vour,  but  you  need  not  fear  him.  It  is  not  many  men  that 
lions  catch.  Your  most  dangerous  enemies  are  like  ser- 
pents in  the  grass.  Among  them  are  vanity,  pride,  imperti- 
nence, indolence,  carelessness,  dishonesties,  and  complainings. 
There  is  not  one  serpent  merely,  but  there  are  many  serpents 
gliding  about  to  sting  you.  You  have  great  need  to  guard 
against  them. 

Bear  witness,  ye  old  praying  saints !  you  that  have  worn 
out  the  watches  of  the  night  in  tears  and  i^rayers  before  God, 
and  thought  that  he  delayed — bear  witness  that  he  has  not 
forsaken  you  !  You  have  seen  your  children  go  from  you ; 
you  have  prayed  that  they  might  be  restored  to  you  ;  years 
and  years  have  gone  by,  and  now  some  of  them  have  come 
back,  and  your  prayers  have  been  answered  in  their  return. 
Some  of  them  have  not  come  back  yet ;  but  I  say  that,  in  the 
light  of  the  experience  which  has  been  vouchsafed  to  you, 
you  have  strong  ground  for  hope.  "Wait.  You  will  yet  see 
them.  And  if  you  do  not  see  them  in  this  world,  what  is  far 
better,  you  will  see  them  in  the  world  to  come.  They  are 
not  forgotten  of  God,  though  man  has  forgotten  them.  They 
are  not  scattered  from  the  fold  of  God,  even  if  they  are  scat- 
tered fi'om  your  little  band.  God  has  taken  care  of  them. 
And  I  say  to  you, "  Wait  patiently."  Having  waited  so  long, 
and  got  so  much,  do  you  not  know  enough  to  wait  longer, 
and  to  believe  that  God  will  give  you  more  ?  Ah  !  if,  watch- 
ing in  the  night,  you  have  waited  till  twelve  o'clock,  you  can 
wait  till  one ;  and  if  you  have  waited  till  one,  you  can  wait 
till  two ;  and  if  you  have  waited  till  two,  you  can  wait  till « 
three ;  and  if  you  have  waited  till  three,  it  will  be  daylight  at 
four ;  wait  till  five ;  and  if  you  have  waited  till  five,  behold  ! 
the  sun  is  above  the  mountains.  Rise  up,  children  of  light, 
for  the  day  is  upon  you ! 

You  have  waited  long,  and  what  has  God  brought  to  you  ? 
Your  liberty  !  Take  this  great  boon  and  make  good  use  of 
it.  Let  men  see  that  you  can  be  free  without  being  destroy- 
ed.    Teach   your   children.      Seek   instruction   yourselves. 


26  Christian  Waiting. 

Learn  to  read,  that  you  may  be  able  to  read  God's  Bible. 
Be  better  men  and  women.  If  you  have  any  great  sins,  break 
away  from  them.  If  there  is  any  thing  in  which  you  know 
that  you  are  wrong,  correct  that  thing  at  once.  You  owe 
yourselves  to  God  as  thank-offerings  for  the  mercies  which 
you  have  received  at  his  hands ;  and  see  to  it  that  you  live 
such  godly  lives  as  you  have  never  lived  before.  I  hear  good 
accounts  of  you.  I  thank  God  for  the  tidings  that  have  come 
to  my  ears  concerning  your  conduct.  I  only  pray  that  every 
one  of  you  may  consecrate  himself,  as  a  free  man,  to  the  serv- 
ice of  Christ.  Only  four  months  ago  every  one  of  you,  if  you 
had  come  to  Christ,  would  have  had  to  come  saying,  "  Lord 
Jesus,  here  I  am,  a  poor  creature.  I  have  no  flag,  and  no 
country.  Nobody  cares  for  me.  I  want  to  give  you  some- 
thing, but  I  have  not  much  to  give.  I  have  no  fields  and  no 
harvests.  I  can  only  bring  you  a  little  flower  or  something 
from  the  wayside.  I  have  nothing  to  give  you  but  my  poor 
heart,  and  I  am  a  slave."  But  now  you  can  come  to  Christ 
and  say, "  I  have  something  better — I  have  a  freeman's  heart." 

And  who  is  there  here  that  will  be  so  mean,  when  God  has 
done  so  much  for  him,  as  to  go  and  get  drunk,  or  steal,  or 
lie,  or  gamble  ?  "What  man  is  there  among  you  that,  when 
God  has  been  so  kind  to  you,  and  done  so  much  for  you — 
when  he  has  broken  your  bonds  and  set  you  free — will  not 
give  to  God  the  life  that  is  before  him? 

Mothers  in  Israel,  I  expect  to  hear  from  you  that  you  love 
more  and  love  better  than  you  did  before.  Fathers,  whose 
«  days  are  almost  spent,  I  expect  to  hear  from  you  that  you  are 
inspiring  the  young  with  a  better  example,  and  Avith  more 
godly  counsels,  and  that  you  pray  more  than  ever.  You  that 
are  young,  I  expect  to  hear  from  you  that  you  are  growing 
up  to  be  worthy  and  useful  men  and  women.  And  you  that 
have  gone  into  the  service  of  your  country,  may  God  make 
you  valiant,  faithful,  and  true.  And,  by-and-by,  when  the 
vote  is  pl^t  into  your  hand,  make  as  good  a  use  of  that  as 
you  now  do  of  the  musket. 


Cheistian  Waiting.  27 

6.  What  people  ought  to  be  able  more  than  this  American 
people  to  bear  testimony  that  God  is  good  ?  And  who  more 
than  we  ought  to  have  patience  now  with  imperfect  things  ? 
I  meet  with  many  men  who  are  in  great  trouble.  They  tell 
me  that  the  generals  of  our  army  are  not  all  that  they  ought 
to  be.  Are  they  not  ?  That  is  surprising !  I  supposed  that 
every  one  of  our  generals  was  a  perfect  man!  They  tell  me 
that  the  government  does  not  do  the  best  things  all  the 
time.  Why,  it  is  astonishing !  I  am  amazed  that  the  gov- 
ernment does  not  always  do  the  best  things ! 

Was  there  ever  a  government  that  was  not  obliged  to  do 
things  imperfectly  ?  Was  there  ever  a  government  that  was 
not  compelled  to  employ  imperfect  instruments  ?  Was  tliere 
ever  a  general  that  w^as  not  an  imperfect  man  ?  Washington 
had  his  imf)erfections.  All  men,  from  the  beginning  of  the 
world  to  this  day,  have  had  their  imperfections.  Now  I  do 
not  excuse  men  for  their  Avrong-doings ;  but  this  I  say:  In 
this  day  of  release  and  victory,  shall  men  forget  the  good 
and  see  only  the  evil  ?  Shall  we  sit  like  frogs  by  the  pools 
croaking,  croaking  the  night  long?  or  shall  we,  like  birds, 
sing  God's  praises  that  the  night  is  past  and  day  at  hand  ? 
Remember  that  you  must  creep  before  you  walk ;  that, 
from  the  nature  of  things,  there  must  be  crudeness  before 
ripeness,  and  that  there  can  not  but  be  more  or  less  that 
is  wrong.  And  having  come  to  this  conclusion,  wait.  Do 
not  be  impatient.  Live  in  hoj^e.  Things  will  come  out 
right — if  not  to-day,  then  to-morrow.  Evils  will  steadily 
correct  themselves.  Give  the  government  time.  Give  our 
public  men  time.  If  you  could  see  inside  of  their  hearts,  you 
would  see  that  most  of  them,  according  to  the  power  that 
God  gave  them,  are  doing  all  they  can  to  advance  the  right. 
And  if  you  find  fault  with  them,  and  complain,  and  look  on 
the  dark  side,  you  will  be  taking  sides  wdth  the  devil,  who  is 
called  the  accuser  of  the  brethren.  Wait  patiently,  and  God 
will  bring  things  right  by-and-by. 

Look  at  the  condition  of  the  South.     When  sometimes  I 


28  Christian  Waiting. 

have  insisted  that  she  was  yet  to  have  glorious  times,  men 
have  laughed  and  said,  "  I  sui^jDOse  you  have  not  been  along 
the  line  of  Sherman's  march  ?"  No,  I  have  not.  But  my 
faith  is  not  in  proximate  causes.  It  is  in  my  unswerving  be- 
lief that  God  is  governing,  and  that  he  is  carrying  on  a  woi'k 
which  he  will  consummate  in  righteousness.  The  South  is 
far  better  off  without  slavery  than  she  was  with  it,  no  matter 
how  much  poverty  and  suffering  there  is  now  within  her 
borders.  I  will  tell  you  what  she  was  like.  When  our 
Master  came  down  from  the  mountain  of  transfiguration, 
there  was  brought  to  him,  you  know,  a  person  possessed  of 
the  devil.  When  Jesus  saw  the  child,  the  devil  threw  him 
on  the  ground,  and  tore  him,  and  he  lay  foaming  and  wallow- 
ing. And  Christ  said  to  the  foul  spirit, "  I  charge  thee,  come 
out  of  him."  And  he  cried,  and  rent  the  boy;  and  when  he 
came  out  of  him,  the  boy  lay  upon  the  ground,  and  men  said, 
"He  is  dead!  lie  is  deadP  They  would  rather  have  had 
him  alive,  even  though  he  had  a  devil  in  him,  than  to  have 
had  him  dead ;  but  Christ  thought  it  better  to  have  the  devil 
cast  out,  even  if  it  killed  the  child.  But  it  did  not  kill  him ; 
for  he  lay  only  a  moment  to  get  strength,  and  then,  at  the 
touch  of  Christ,  rose  up,  restored  and  in  his  right  mind. 

Now  the  South  lies  wallowing  on  the  ground.  The  devil, 
of  which  she  has  been  long  possessed,  has  rent  her  sore  and 
cast  her  on  the  ground.  And  now  she  lies  as  dead,  insomuch 
that  many  say  she  is  dead.  But  I  hear  the  voice  of  Christ 
saying  "  she  is  not  dead ;  she  sleejos."  And  ere  long  she 
shall  wake,  and  rise  to  a  better  manhood  than  she  has  ever 
before  attained.  There  was  never  before  such  a  good  time 
for  the  South  as  there  is  to-day.  I  would  rather  have  her 
in  her  laceration,  and  poverty,  and  bereavement,  as  she  is 
to-day,  than  to  have  her  as  she  was  in  her  palmy  days  of 
wealth,  when  every  port  was  a  mart  for  slaves,  when  every 
plantation  was  a  place  of  bondage,  and  when  every  man 
was  making  money  by  treading  God's  image  under  foot,  and 
violating  every  canon  of  humanity.     She  is  richer  to-day 


Christian  Waiting.  29 

than  she  ever  was  before,  because  she  has  got  rid  of  the  m- 
carnate  fiend  of  which  she  was  possessed.  Tell  me,  when  was 
Judas  richest ;  when  he  was  following  Christ  without  money 
in  his  pocket,  or  after  he  had  betrayed  Christ,  when  he  had 
thirty  pieces  of  silver  in  his  pocket  ?  He  is  rich  that  follows 
Christ  and  obeys  God's  laws,  and  not  he  that  has  money. 

But  consider  that  great  work  which  has  been  brought  upon 
us  by  the  events  of  our  time — the  work  ot  educating  and  car- 
ing for  the  colored  men  of  the  South.  A  great  many  men 
laugh  us  to  scorn  when  we  tell  them  what  we  are  going  to 
do  for  the  elevation  of  the  negro,  and  try  to  discourage  us  by 
picturing  the  sufferings  that  he  will  have  to  undergo.  There 
are  ten  men  to  ridicule  and  hinder  this  work  where  there  is 
one  to  help  it  forward.  "We  are  aware  that  we  shall  have 
difficulties  to  overcome.  That  there  will  be  suffering  we  do 
not  doubt.  It  is  not  possible  to  change  any  condition  of  so- 
ciety, and  not  have,  during  that  transition  period,  more  or 
less  of  suffering.  A  whole  community  can  not  be  passed 
through  a  period  of  war,  of  revolution,  and  emancipation 
without  vast  suffering  of  every  sort.  Of  these  people,  many 
will  die  of  hunger.  Many  will  be  shot  down.  Many  fami- 
lies will  be  scattered.  In  many  instances  they  will  suffer 
more  than  they  would  have  suffered  on  the  plantation.  But 
this  suffering  is  indispensable  to  a  better  state  that  is  to 
follow. 

The  old  colored  man  was  wise  who,  at  Fortress  Monroe, 
said, "  I've  been  praying  all  my  life  for  this  time  to  come ; 
and,  now  that  it  has  come,  I  sha'n't  live  to  enjoy  it ;  but  that's 
no  matter.  I've  got  to  die ;  but  ah !  the  chiVen — they'll  live 
to  enjoy  it." 

Many  saints,  whose  days  are  almost  ended,  will  sit  on  the 
top  of  the  mountain,  and  look  into  the  promised  land,  who 
will  not  be  permitted  to  enter  into  it.  Liberty  is  coming, 
intelligence  is  coming,  citizenship  is  coming,  but  many  of  you 
will  not  see  these  things.  You  are  going  to  die  in  the  wil- 
derness.    But  ah !  Israel  will  be  free ! 


30  Christian  Waiting. 

Pray  on,  then.  Trust  in  God !  Do  not  listen  to  any  one 
who  would  make  you  discontented.  I  beseech  of  you,  have 
faith,  not  in  man,  but  in  him  that  loved  you,  that  redeemed 
you  with  his  precious  blood,  that  sitteth  on  high,  and  that 
hath  decreed  that  every  yoke  shall  be  broken,  and  that  the 
opijressed  shall  go  free. 

I  remember  that  I  am  speaking  where  I  never  expected 
to  preach  —  at  least  in  my  youth.  I  did  not  know  but  I 
should  preach  here  when  I  was  a  very  old  man — so  old  that 
nobody  would  be  afraid  of  me ;  but  God  has  permitted  me 
to  stand  here  while  I  am  yet  strong.  And  he  is  my  wit- 
ness that  my  joy  is  not  merely  the  joy  of  a  man  who  exults 
over  an  enemy  subdued.  I  joy  in  the  Holy  Ghost.  I  joy  in 
the  wiping  out  of  the  disgraceful  fact  that  any  worthy  citi- 
zen of  the  United  States  of  America — the  country  that  boasts 
of  larger  liberty  than  any  other  nation  on  earth — should  not 
be  permitted  to  go  where  he  chose  in  his  own  land.  There 
never  has  been  a  period  in  my  lifetime  when  I  could  go  south 
of  Mason  and  Dixon's  line  except  at  the  risk  of  my  life.  I 
have  been  excluded  from  half  the  states  of  this  Union,  not  be- 
cause I  was  convicted  of  any  crime,  but  merely  because  I  be- 
lieved in  the  doctrine  ot  the  Declaration  of  Independence. 
But  things  are  changed ;  and  I  am  here  in  Charleston  !  And 
my  feeling  toward  those  that  have  withheld  from  me  privi- 
leges which  belong  to  every  man  under  a  free  government  is 
not,  "  Ah !  now  you  are  down,  and  we  have  got  our  feet  on 
your  neck !"  I  am  sorry  for  them,  as  I  am  for  all  wrong- 
doers. I  would,  so  far  as  it  is  consistent  with  justice,  bind  up 
their  wounded  hearts  and  help  them.  No,  I  do  not  rejoice 
in  their  overthrow.  In  this  is  my  joy :  that  Charleston  is 
free,  and  that  there  is  not  a  man  in  the  United  States,  uncon- 
victed of  crime,  who  may  not  walk  through  her  streets  in 
safety.  My  joy  is  in  this :  that  through  Georgia,  and  Al- 
abama, and  the  Caroliuas — through  every  state  in  all  this 
land  where  float  the  Stars  and  Stripes,  any  American,  not 
guilty  of  misdemeanors,  can  walk  freely  and  safely.     There  is 


Christian  Waiting.  31 

now  nothing  that  divides  us,  and  nothing  that  threatens  us. 
That  is  the  ground  of  my  rejoicing,  and  in  view  of  that  I  can 
never  rejoice  enough.  I  never  can  pay  God  for  the  benefits 
that  I  have  received.  But  my  personal  good  is  as  nothing 
compared  with  the  good  of  my  country,  which  is  the  dearest 
land  on  earth.  And  now  she  has  gone  through  a  crisis 
which,  let  us  hope,  will  end  in  perfect  health.  She  has  pass- 
ed the  peril  of  her  youth,  and  is  entering  upon  a  sound  man- 
hood, and  is  to  he  a  power  on  the  globe.  For  this  I  thank 
God,  and  bless  his  name,  and  rejoice. 

And  now,  Chi'istian  friends  and  brethren,  all,  I  call  upon 
you,  by  the  great  mercies  of  God,  to  present  yourselves  as 
living  sacrifices,  holy,  accej^table  unto  God.  Do  not  taniish 
his  inestimable  gifts  by  selfishness.  Consecrate  your  hearts 
at  once  to  the  divine  service.  Be  willing  to  work,  and  let 
others  have  the  praise.  Be  willing  to  work,  and  let  others 
reap  the  fruits  of  your  labor.  Be  like  Christ,  who  gave  his 
life  to  save  men.  Be  more  noble.  Heroically  bear  your 
cross.  Carry  your  burden  without  a  murmuring.  It  is  only 
a  little  while  that  we  shall  have  to  suffer.  We  are  almost 
down  to  the  river,  and  it  is  not  lialf  so  deep  as  you  think. 
We  are  coming  to  the  shore  already,  and  methinks  I  hear, 
wafted  from  the  other  side,  that  sweetest  song  of  them  that 
cry  ceaselessly,  "  Come,  come."  They  are  crying  to  you,  and 
they  are  crying  to  me,  "  Come  up  hither,  and  wear  the  bridal 
robes  at  the  marriage-supper  of  the  Lamb."  Every  one  of 
us  must  go  sooner  or  later ;  by-and-by  we  shall  all  be  there ; 
and  oh !  the  joy  that  is  laid  up  for  us  who  serve  Christ ! 

You,  dear  friends,  that  have  succored  our  poor  wounded 
soldiers  in  prison,  and  who,  some  of  you,  have  had  strij^es  on 
your  back  because  you  would  give  them  help,  God  has  laid 
up  mercies  for  you.  "Inasmu,ch  as  ye  have  done  it  unto 
one  of  the  least  of  these  my  brethren,  ye  have  done  it  unto 
me,"  says  Christ.  You  have  had  tears,  day  and  night,  for 
your  meat  and  drink ;  there  is  a  land  just  before  you  where 
there  are  no  tears.     You  that  have  borne  Christ's  cross,  just 


82  Christian  Waiting. 

before  you  is  Christ's  throne,  and  you  shall  sit  with  Christ 
there. 

Let  us,  then,  stand  in  our  place,  be  men,  gird  up  our  loins, 
trim  our  lamps,  and  be  found  ready  to  depart  whenever 
Christ  shall  say  to  us  "  Come."  And  when  at  last  we  come 
together  in  heaven,  oh !  meet  me,  every  one  of  you !  Be 
there,  every  man  and  every  child.  Join  me  in  the  home 
above,  that,  taking  hold  of  hands  around  the  throne  of  God, 
we  may  unite  in  sending  up  a  song  of  blessing,  and  honor, 
and  glory,  and  power  unto  him  that  sitteth  on  the  throne, 
and  to  the  Lamb  forever  and  ever ! 


PRAYER. 

We  rejoice,  O  God,  that  thou  art  drawing  near  and  giv- 
ing, in  the  heavens  and  in  the  earth,  the  tokens  of  the  reviv- 
ing year.  Thou  art  commanding  the  storms,  and  they  ai-e 
breaking  and  passing.  Thou  art  speaking,  and  the  snow  and 
ice  are  going  back.  The  sound  of  the  birds  is  in  the  air,  and 
thou  art  bringing  forth  the  signs  of  leaves,  and  every  day 
milder  heavens  shall  prophesy  quicker  growth.  Thou  art 
drawing  near  in  the  power  of  resurrection,  and  the  spring  is 
already  dawning.  O  Lord,  draw  near  to  this  sin-locked 
earth,  where  winter  and  night  have  brooded  so  long,  where 
thy  spring  has  been  so  hindered,  and  where  men,  as  trees 
that  are  frozen  fast  in  the  ground,  have  been  forbidden  to 
blossom  or  to  bring  forth  fruit.  Thou  Savior  of  men,  is  thy 
mission  ended  ?  and  have  we  seen  expended  the  force  of  all 
thine  example,  of  thy  wondrous  power  of  doctrine,  and  of 
that  ascension-power  which  thou  dost  wield  as  Prince  and 
Head  over  all  things,  that  time  should  at  last  begin  to  flow 
back  and  ovei-whelm  with  universal  selfishness  the  work  that 
is  but  inaugurated?  For  where  are  the  races  of  men? 
What  are  all  that  know  thy  name  compared  with  the  count- 
less millions  that  have  never  heard  of  thee  ?  And  what  are 
the  beginning  virtues  of  the  best  of  thy  peojjle  compared 
with  that  great  ignorance  which  yet  wraps  the  world? 
Lord,  hast  thou  walked  upon  this  earth  ?  Has  it  heard  thy 
voice  ?  Has  it  felt  the  beating  of  thine  heart  ?  Dost  thou 
forget  that  thy  work  is  not  ended  ?  Thou  dost  not.  Then 
make  haste,  O  God.     Delay  not  thy  coming ;  for  the  king- 


Christian  Waiting.  33 

dom  of  Satan  is  mighty,  and  it  shakes  the  earth  with  the 
tread  of  armies,  and  with  the  weight  of  oppressing  sceptres. 
Where,  O  Lord,  art  thou,  that  prisoners  die  and  are  not  heard 
in  their  sighing  ?  Where  art  thou,  that  the  people  are  hin- 
dered from  knowledge,  and  are  trodden  as  grapes  in  the 
wine-press  ?  Where  art  thou,  that  the  poor  are  despoiled 
without  a  deliverer,  and  that  all  the  earth  conspires  and 
frames  iniquity  by  law,  and  seeks  by  nets  and  meshes  the  de- 
struction of  the  poor  and  the  needy  ?  Thou  art  not  asleep, 
O  Jehovah ;  and  because  thou  delayest  thy  coming  thou  shalt 
not  forget  to  come  suddenly;  and  with  outstretched  arm, 
and  with  the  sword  of  vengeance  in  thine  hand,  thou  wilt 
appear  with  disaster  and  utter  destruction  to  thine  adversa- 
ries. Thou  wilt  appear  as  the  morning  sun  comes  over  the 
hills,  and  the  glory  of  thy  coming  shall  give  hope  to  the  poor 
and  oppressed,  and  thy  people  shall  hail  thee  as  their  deliv- 
erer. How  long  must  we  wait  ?  How  long  must  we  labor  ? 
How  long  shall  Ave  walk  in  the  watches  of  the  night  as  they 
that  wait  and  watch  for  the  morning  ?  O  Lord  our  God,  we 
imj^lore  thee.  Wait  not.  Make  haste.  Let  the  days  of  thy 
delay  be  cut  short,  and  let  the  wheels  of  thy  chariot  be  heard 
coming  swiftly  through  the  air,  bringing  joy  to  this  world 
that  hath  groaned  and  travailed  in  pain  until  now.  We 
pray  that  thou  wilt  encourage  thy  people.  Give  them  faith 
in  thee  as  their  deliverer.  "Give  them  faith  in  the  truths 
of  Christ  Jesus.  Give  them  a  zeal  and  a  heart  to  vindicate 
those  truths,  asserting  them  in  the  face  of  all  contradictors. 
O  Lord,  we  beseech  of  thee  that  the  armies  of  those  who 
contend  by  faith,  and  meekness,  and  love  may  be  multiplied, 
and  that,  though  full  of  love,  they  may  be  full  of  courage  to 
face  tyrants  and  tyrannies,  and  all  the  potency  of  men  in  au- 
thority. Grant,  we  beseech  of  thee,  that,  with  thy  mind,  with 
Christ's  mind,  men  may  become  valiant  in  all  the  earth.  We 
t)eseech  of  thee  that  the  condition  of  those  who  are  growing 
up  may  be  not  more  lax,  but  more  zealous,  more  earnest,  more 
full  of  the  inspirations  of  heavenly  courage.  Forbid  that 
any  more  should  throw  away  their  lives  toward  selfishness, 
and  toward  pride,  and  toward  all  the  passions  that  have  dis- 
tracted this  world.  O  that  those  who  are  now  growing  up 
might  have  the  heavenly  vision  before  them,  and  that  they 
might  have  such  an  ideal  of  manhood  as  shall  bring  them  far 
above  their  fathers,  that  when  the  aifairs  of  this  generation 
pass  from  their  hands  into  those  of  their  children,  they  may 
be  more  worthily  administered,  and  advanced  higher  on  the 
Christian  plane  than  we  have  carried  them.     We  are  wander- 

n.— c 


34  Christian  Waiting. 

ing  darkly  through  this  earthly  course,  seeking,  as  we  may, 
to  sow  the  good  seed ;  seeking  to  do  such  work  as  is  fitted  to 
our  hand.  But  this  world  is  not  our  abiding-place,  and  the 
foundations  that  we  build  are  for  others,  and  not  for  our- 
selves. We  sow  the  seed,  but  other  men  shall  enter  into  the 
harvest,  even  as  we  reap  the  seed  sown  by  those  who  have 
gone  before  us.  We  walk  by  faith  and  not  by  sight.  We  are 
willing  to  labor,  not  expecting  to  see  the  fruit  of  our  endeav- 
ors. We  rejoice,  O  God,  that  thou  wilt  bring  us  ere  long 
where  we  shall  have  rest  and  peace ;  where  we  shall  know 
thee  as  we  are  known ;  where  we  shall  behold  thine  out- 
spread work,  and  all  mysteries  shall  pass  away,  and  all 
knowledge  shall  be  revealed.  Grant,  then,  that  we  may  la- 
bor with  our  might  while  it  is  day.  The  night  cometh  when 
none  of  us  can  labor.  May  we  desire  nothing  better  than 
health  and  strength  that  we  may  work  for  Christ  and  the 
kingdom  of  the  Savior  in  this  world.  And  when  we  shall 
have  finished  our  earthly  career,  be  pleased  to  take  us  by  the 
power  of  thy  love  into  thine  immediate  presence,  where  we 
will  praise  the  Father,  the  Son,  and  the  Holy  Spirit  forever 
more.     Amen. 


II. 


€^t  Snrornatinn  nf  Christ. 


Preached  in  Plymouth  Church,  Brooklyn,  Sabbath  morning, 
October  23^,  1859. 


The  Incaenation". 


"Forasmuch,  then,  as  the  children  are  partakers  of  flesh  and  blood,  he  also 
himself  likewise  took  part  of  the  same ;  that  through  death  he  might  de- 
stroy him  that  has  the  poweT  of  death,  that  is,  the  dexil ;  and  deliver 
them  who,  through  fear  of  death,  were  all  their  lifetime  subject  to  bond- 
age. For  verily  he  took  not  on  him  the  nature  of  angels ;  but  he  took 
on  him  the  seed  of  Abraham.  Wherefore  in  all  things  it  behooved  him 
to  be  made  like  unto  his  brethren ;  that  he  might  be  a  merciful  and 
faithful  high-priest  in  things  pertaining  to  God,  to  make  reconciliation 
for  the  sins  of  the  people.  For  in  that  he  himself  hath  suffered,  being 
tempted,  he  is  able  to  succor  them  that  are  tempted." — Heb.,  ii.,  14-18. 

This  passage  seems  to  me  like  part  of  a  great  and  fruitful 
tree,  wliich,  stretching  out  over  the  garden  wall  into  the 
highway,  is  covered  with  blossoms  and  fruit,  reaching  down 
so  low  that  not  only  may  men  pluck  for  their  need,  but  little 
children's  hands  can  reach  and  take  the  bounty  of  God,  which 
is  a  perj^etual  miracle ;  for  the  fruit,  like  the  loaves,  increases 
as  you  pick  it,  and  grows  by  the  very  method  of  diminu- 
tion. And  yet  it  is  but  a  branch.  The  whole  tree  is  not 
seen.  Beyond  the  sight  are  other  boughs  like  this,  cluster- 
ing around  the  central  strength  of  the  firm  trunk,  and  held 
down  on  every  side,  in  vast  sweep  and  munificence  of  fruit, 
for  the  universal  want.  It  is  the  tree  of  Jife  whose  branch 
has  thus  shot  forth.  It  stands  in  the  garden  of  God.  It 
bears  twelve  manner  of  fruits,  and  the  leaves,  even,  are  me- 
dicinal, for  they  are  for  the  healing  of  nations. 

It  is  but  a  cluster  of  leaves,  a  single  fruit,  that  we  can 
pluck  to-day,  and  when  our  hour  is  exhausted,  more  a  thou- 
sand times  will  remain  than  we  shall  have  taken. 

"  Verily  he  took  not  on  him  the  nature  of  angels,  but  he 
took  on  him  the  seed  of  Abraham." 

He  "  took" — he  did  not  inherit  or  receive — a  body.    It  is 


38  The  Incarnation. 

not  the  language  that  describes  the  ordinary  birth  of  a  com- 
mon man.  How  strange  it  would  sound  if  we  were  to  speak 
of  our  children  as  if  they  had  had  a  thought  or  volition  re- 
specting their  nature,  and  as  if  they  were  pleased  to  take  on 
them  such  and  such  a  body  when  they  were  born !  It  is  im- 
possible not  to  see  in  this  language  that  it  marks  an  essen- 
tial and  prominent  difference  between  Christ's  entrance  into 
this  life  and  that  of  ordinary  men.  It  describes  voluntary 
action.  It  was  an  act  contemplated  beforehand.  It  implies 
not  only  pre-existence,  but  power,  dignity,  and  condescen- 
sion. 

But  the  language  clearly  indicates  a  choice  exercised  by 
one  raised  higher  than  all  merely  created  beings.  "-He  took 
not  on  Mm  the  nature  of  angels^  hut  he  tooh  on  him  the  see^ 
of  AhrahaniP  That  is,  he  is  more  than  man.  He  is  more 
than  an  angel.  He  refused,  when  turning  in  his  muid  the 
course  he  should  pursue,  to  take  on  him  the  nature  of  angels, 
but  concluded,  for  a  good  and  sufficient  reason,  to  assume 
even  a  lower  place,  and  to  become  a  man.  Is  he  less  than 
God  that  is  more  than  man  and  more  than  angel  ? 

Partly  arising  from  discussions,  and  partly  from  the  re- 
maining thorns  and  nettles  with  which  sectarianism  whips 
us,  there  is  a  great  deal  of  unnecessary  sensitiveness  on  the 
part  of  many  persons  at  calling  Christ  God.  It  is  a  sensi- 
tiveness that  is  not  reasonable.  No  man  can  analyze  or  syn- 
thesize the  divine  being.  No  man  can  put  together  the  ele- 
ments of  being,  and  say.  So  much  makes  a  man ;  so  much 
more  makes  an  angel  j  and  now  by  so  much  more  a  God  be- 
gins ;  and,  at  length,  such  and  such  elements  make  a  full  and 
complete  divinity ! 

Have  you  an  interior  knowledge  of  what  are  the  constitu- 
ent elements  of  God  ?  You  are  a  man ;  therefore  it  is  imj)OS- 
sible  for  you  to  understand  God  fully. 

We  measure  the  nature  of  a  being  first  by  what  we  are. 
If  he  transcends  our  condition,  we  can  measure  him  by  what 
we  know  of  angelic  nature.     If  he  transcends  that,  there  is 


The  Incarnation.  89 

no  other  way  in  which  we  can  estimate  him.  "We  can  go  no 
higher.  Neither  are  we  able  to  judge  of  divine  mentality, 
in  such  a  way  as  to  know  the  difference  between  divine  and 
created  minds. 

All  that  remains,  therefore,  for  us  in  estimating  Christ's  na- 
ture, is  to  judge  by  functional  tests. 

He  is  more  than  man,  and  more  than  angel.  Now,  is  there 
any  thing  in  his  relations  and  in  his  doings  that  would  indi- 
cate that  he  is  very  God  ?  Did  he  create,  and  does  he  sus- 
tain the  world  in  which  we  dwell?  The  first  chapter  of 
John's  Gospel  unequivocally  declares  that  fact.  It  is  also 
unequivocally  declared  in  Hebrews. 

Is  he  the  Head  of  intelligences  ?    He  is  the  Head  over  all. 

"  Who,  being  in  the  form  of  God,  thought  it  not  robbery  to 
be  equal  with  God ;  but  made  himself  of  no  reputation,  and 
took  upon  him  the  form  of  a  servant,  and  was  made  in  the 
likeness  of  men ;  and  being  found  in  fashion  as  a  man,  he 
humbled  himself,  and  became  obedient  unto  death,  even  the 
death  of  the  cross.  Wherefore  God  also  hath  highly  exalted 
him,  and  given  him  a  name  which  is  above  every  name ;  that 
at  the  name  of  Jesus  every  knee  should  bow,  of  things  in 
heaven,  and  things  in  earth,  and  things  under  the  earth ;  and 
that  every  tongue  should  confess  that  Jesus  Christ  is  Lord, 
to  the  glory  of  God  the  Father." 

Does  he  exhaust  every  finite  conception  of  moral  excel- 
lence ?  What  conception  have  you  that  is  not  ten  thousand 
times  more  illustrious  in  him  than  in  your  own  wildest  imag- 
ination it  can  be  ?  Is  he,  lastly,  the  proper  subject  of  love — 
engrossing  and  absorbing  love  —  of  obedience,  and  of  wor- 
ship? Particularly,  is  he  the  proper  subject  of  WORSHIP? 
Let  us  see  what  Scripture  says  on  this  point.  Turn  to  the 
fifth  chapter  of  Revelation,  and  read  from  the  sixth  to  the 
fourteenth  verse : 

"  And  I  beheld,  and  lo,  in  the  midst  of  the  throne,  and  of 
the  four  beasts,  and  in  the  midst  of  the  elders,  stood  a  Lamb 
as  it  had  been  slain,  having  seven  horns,  and  seven  eyes, 


40  The  Incarnation-. 

which  are  the  seven  spirits  of  God  sent  forth  into  all  the 
earth."  This  was  a  symbolic  vision.  "  And  he  came  and 
took  the  book  out  of  the  right  hand  of  him  that  sat  upon  the 
throne.  And  when  he  had  taken  the  book,  the  four  beasts 
and  four-and-twenty  elders  fell  down  before  the  Lamb,  having 
every  one  of  them  harps  and  golden  vials  full  of  odors,  which 
are  the  prayers  of  saints.  And  they  sung  a  new  song,  say- 
ing, Thou  art  worthy  to  take  the  book,  and  to  open  the  seals 
thereof;  for  thou  wast  slain,  and  hast  redeemed  us  to  God  by 
thy  blood  out  of  every  kindred,  and  tongue,  and  people,  and 
nation ;  and  hast  made  us  unto  our  God  kings  and  priests ; 
and  we  shall  reign  on  the  earth." 

That  is  the  ascription  of  worthiness  to  take  the  book,  what- 
ever may  be  meant  by  that.  It  is,  as  it  were,  the  solo — the 
recitative.  And  now  the  whole  universe  stands  up  for  the 
chorus : 

"  And  I  beheld,  and  I  heard  the  voice  of  many  angels  round 
about  the  throne,  and  the  beasts  and  the  elders;  and  the 
number  of  them  was  ten  thousand  times  ten  thousand,  and 
thousands  of  thousands ;  saying  with  a  loud  voice.  Worthy 
is  the  Lamb  that  was  slain,  to  receive  power,  and  riches,  and 
wisdom,  and  strength,  and  honor,  and  glory,  and  blessing. 
And  every  creature  which  is  in  heaven,  and  on  the  earth,  and 
under  the  earth,  and  such  as  are  in  the  sea,  and  all  that  are 
in  them,  heard  I  saying,  Blessing,  and  honor,  and  glory,  and 
power  be  unto  him  that  sitteth  upon  the  throne,  and  unto  the 
Lamb  forever  and  ever.  And  the  four  beasts  said  Amen. 
And  the  four-and-twenty  elders  fell  down  and  worshiped  him 
that  liveth  forever  and  ever." 

Now  after  the  whole  universal  host,  in  a  divine  and  heav- 
enly enthusiasm,  have  laid  such  honors  on  the  head  of  Christ, 
is  there  any  thing  in  the  heart  of  a  man  that  you  do  not  dare 
to  give  to  him,  lest  God  be  displeased  ?  Have  you  any  thing 
so  much  more  sacred  than  these  ascriptions  of  love  and  rev- 
erence, gloriously  thundered  by  the  universal  host  of  heaven, 
that  you  dare  not  go  to  Christ  and  offer  it  to  him  as  wor- 


The  Incarnation.  41 

sliij)  ?  In  view  of  such  chanting  and  world-surrounding  out- 
cry and  heavenly  ecstasy,  is  there  any  thing  which  a  human 
being  can  think,  or  feel,  or  do  toward  the  throne,  and  to 
him  that  sits  thereon,  which  is  not  right  for  him  to  do  to 
Christ  ? 

What  use  is  there,  then,  for  any  uneasy  questioning  far- 
ther ?  and  what  fear  need  there  be  of  letting  forth  all  that 
the  heart  has  in  it,  to  Christ  ?  For,  with  every  enthusiasm 
fired,  and  with  every  power  raised  to  a  heavenly  glory,  it  was 
not  possible  for  the  great  company  of  the  blessed,  and  the 
choral  universe,  to  think,  to  feel,  to  say,  or  to  do  enough,  and 
the  offering  of  the  redeemed  to  Christ  was  all  that  their  na- 
ture had  ua  it  to  give  to  any  one.  There  was  nothing  higher, 
nothing  deeper,  nothing  more  comprehensive,  nothing  better 
in  thought,  or  word,  or  feelmg,  than  the  ascriptions  which 
were  offered  to  the  Lamb. 

The  practical  result,  then,  of  this  exposition,  is  this :  Christ 
is  presented  to  us  as  the  comprehensible  form  of  God.  He  is 
God  translated.  To  put  him  aside,  and  to  attemjot  to  raise 
up  behind,  and  beyond,  and  above  him,  a  shadowy  ideal  of 
a  Spirit  of  God,  Jehovah,  and  to  worshij)  that  ideal,  is,  in 
effect,  to  neglect  the  easy  manifestation  of  God  for  the  diffi- 
cult one — the  possible  one  for  the  impossible.  And  the  evil 
of  this  is  not  that  the  Father  and  Son  are  jealous  of  each 
other,  so  that,  if  you  give  to  the  Father  what  the  Son  claims, 
or  to  the  Son  what  the  Father  claims,  there  will  be  ill  feeling 
between  them.  Nor  is  it  that  there  is  a  partition  of  offices, 
such  that  one  of  these  persons  of  the  Godhead  will  not  do 
what  is  the  other's  function.  The  evil  of  not  worshiping 
Christ  will  be  upon  ourselves.  It  is  the  difference  between 
having  before  the  mind  the  conception  of  a  shadow  and  the 
conception  of  a  comprehensible  being.  They  that  worship 
God  as  a  mere  spirit  worship  under  the  most  difficult  cir- 
cumstances in  which  it  is  possible  for  the  human  mind  to 
worship.  It  is  the  scrij)tural  method  to  worship  the  Father 
through  Christ;  and  they  that  worship  Christ  as  very  God 


42  The  Incarnation. 

are  enabled  to  worship  under  circumstances  which  make  it 
very  easy ;  for  Christ  is  God  present  to  us  in  such  a  way 
that  our  senses,  our  reason,  and  our  affections  are  able  to  take 
a  personal  hold  upon  him.  It  is  just  the  difference  between 
a  God  afar  off  and  a  God  near  at  hand ;  between  a  God  that 
the  heart  can  reach,  and  by  its  common  sympathies  under- 
stand and  interpret,  and  a  God  which  only  the  head  and  im- 
agination can  at  all  reach  or  descry — and  even  these  only  as 
astronomers'  glasses  descry  nebulous  worlds  at  so  vast  a  dis- 
tance that  the  highest  powers  can  not  resolve  them,  or  make 
them  less  than  mere  luminous  mist. 

If,  having  a  glorious  manifestation  of  divinity  that  you  can 
take  hold  upon  with  your  feelings  and  sympathies,  you  reject 
it  for  one  which  touches  but  one  part  of  you  nature,  and  that 
the  most  uneducated,  -difficult,  and  unmanageable,  it  will  do 
no  special  injury  to  the  feelings  of  the  confratemal  Godhead, 
but  it  will  injure  you. 

And  this  thought  brings  us  back  to  the  hranch  of  which 
we  were  speaking — the  method  of  incarnation.  '"'•  Forasmuch, 
then,  as  the  children  are  partakers  of  flesh  and  blood,  he  also 
himself  likeioise  took  part  of  the  same."  It  was  the  existence 
of  a  divine  mind  in  a  human  body,  subject  to  the  laws  and 
conditions  of  that  body,  which  constituted  the  incarnation  of 
Christ. 

There  have  been  derived  from  the  mystic  speculations  and 
the  legendary  lore  of  the  Romish  Church  imj^ressions  the 
most  unwarrantable  in  Scripture  in  respect  to  the  complex 
nature  of  Christ.  The  Bible  teaches  just  this :  that  the  di- 
vine mind  was  pleased  to  take  upon  itself  a  human  body. 
We  have  no  warrant  in  Scripture  for  attributing  to  Christ 
any  other  part  of  human  nature  than  simply  a  body. 

If,  when  I  read  that  Christ  wept,  I  am  told  that  it  was  his 
human  mind  that  sorrowed,  there  can  be  no  moral  power  in 
it.  That  a  man  should  weep  is  insignificant.  But  that  it 
was  God  that  wept — that  he  is  of  a  disposition  to  do  such 
things,  that  is  indeed  good  news.     This  teaches  of  God  what 


The  Incaenation.  43 

no  philosophy  could  have  evoked,  what  I  could  have  arrived 
at  by  no  process  of  induction.  I  see  into  the  thought,  and 
feelings,  and  disposition  of  my  God ;  for  it  was  God  in  the 
human  body  that  walked  before  me  in  Christ ! 

If  the  representations  of  the  New  Testament  that  Christ 
loved,  longed  for  the  personal  presence  of  his  disciples,  was 
very  patient  with  their  rudeness,  ran  to  their  help  with  more 
love  when  they  fell  into  sin  than  before,  pitied  and  excused 
their  infirmities ;  that  Christ  mourned  over  those  whom  he 
condemned,  and  sadly  denounced  Jerusalem,  amid  tears  ;  that 
he  loved  birds,  flowers,  children ;  that  he  loved  to  sit  at  twi- 
light under  the  olive-trees  on  the  mountain  over  against  Je- 
rusalem, and  commune  with  his  followers  of  the  day's  experi- 
ence ;  that  he  loved  the  solitude  of  the  mountain,  and  prayed 
through  the  night;  that  he  would  gently  steal  upon  the 
evening  walk  of  two  disciples  to  Emmaus,  and  talk  like  a 
stranger  to  those  whom  he  entirely  knew,  and  hesitate  at 
the  door  in  order  to  draw  forth  a  more  earnest  welcome ;  if, 
in  short,  these  ten  thousand  shades  of  thought,  and  feeling, 
and  conduct,  that  give  individuality  and  personality  to  Christ, 
also  interpret  the  disposition  of  God,  how  near  do  they  bring 
him  to  our  tastes,  our  affections,  our  imaginations,  and  our 
reason  !  But  if  there  is  a  second  mind  that  did  these  things, 
and  the  divine  mind  is  left  out  of  sight,  unrevealed  by  such 
natural,  beautiful,  engaging  acts,  we  are  left  nearly  as  much 
in  the  dark  upon  the  divine  disposition  as  we  were  before.  I 
love  to  carry  every  act  of  Christ  right  home  to  him  as  very 
God,  and  to  say,  This  tells  me  how  God  feels,  and  what  he 
is,  for  it  is  God  himself! 

But  why  was  such  a  wonderful  thing  done  ?  Why  did 
Christ  take  the  form  of  man  ?  There  are  two  roots  from 
which  our  ideas  of  God  spring,  and  the  philosophies  which 
arise  from  these  two  roots  will  lead  in  opposite  directions, 
with  opposite  results. 

One  philosophy  teaches  that  God  is  utterly  above  and  un- 
like any  thing  which  we  know.     It  teaches  us  that  some 


44  The  Incaenation. 

things  come  nearer  to  representing  him  than  others,  but  that 
there  is  nothing  that  really  represents  him  in  quality  any 
more  than  in  degree,  and  that  when  we  have  come  the  near- 
est to  knowledge  it  is  yet  not  knowing.  Justice  with  us 
does  not,  according  to  this  method  of  statement,  reveal  jus 
tice  in  God  either  in  kind  or  scope.  Love  is  not  the  same  in 
creator  and  creature.  Our  highest  moral  sentiments  point 
toward  God,  but  not  at  him.  This  is,  substantially,  the  view 
of  one  philosophy. 

A  man  who,  drawing  the  bow  at  a  mark,  comes  within  one 
hair's  breadth  of  hitting  it,  and  yet  does  not  hit  it,  demon- 
strates the  truth  of  the  proverb, "  A  miss  is  as  good  as  a 
mile."  If  he  shoots  toward  the  north,  and  fails  to  hit  the 
mark,  he  might  as  well,  in  so  far  as  hitting  is  concerned,  have 
shot  directly  toward  the  south. 

Suppose  that  I  attempt  to  read  an  unknown  language.  I 
ask  help  for  understanding  it.  They  bring  me  a  Syriac  i^age, 
and  say, "This  is  not  like ^, but  it  has  some  resemblance  to  it." 
Then  how  shall  it  help  me  ?  They  bring  me  a  Hebrew  page, 
and  say, "  This  is  not  really  like  it,  but  it  is  a  little  more  like 
it  than  the  Syriac."  Then  is  brought  a  GreeTchooV^  of  which 
it  is  said, "  This,  too,  is  not  like  it,  but  it  is  nearer  like  it  than 
the  Hebrew ;"  still  I  shall  be  unable  to  understand.  If  you 
will  give  me  a  quality  that  is  the  same  in  man  and  God,  by 
imagination  I  can  raise  it,  clarify  it,  and  give  it  the  propor- 
tions fit  for  divinity.  But  if  the  xmit  is  false,  no  computation 
can  do  other  than  make  the  sum  false. 

Now  to  tell  us  that  God  is  very  much  like  such  and  such 
symbols,  but  yet  is  not  like  them,  even  in  the  respects  com- 
pared, is  to  hold  out  to  us  a  hope,  and  mock  it  at  the  same 
time.  We  need  such  a  view  of  God  that  we  can  say, "  I  know 
whom  I  have  believed." 

There  are  two  roots,  I  said,  fi*om  which  our  ideas  of  God 
spring.  One  presents  a  conception  of  God  derived  from  the 
material  world.  According  to  the  analysis  of  material  sci- 
ence, it  places  him  at  the  head  of  a  government  whose  regu- 


The  Incarnation.  45 

larity  and  constancy  are  without  break.  It  makes  him  a 
being  who  created  all  things,  and  sustains  them  by  certain 
immutable,  unvarying  rules.  This  conception  of  God  is  one 
which  is  derived  from  the  power  of  law,  and  based  on  the 
material  globe. 

Now  such  a  conception  must  enforce,  logically,  a  denial  of 
flexibility  in  God  by  sympathy ;  a  denial  of  any  change  of 
purpose  in  him ;  a  denial  of  the  incarnation,  suffering,  and 
death  of  Christ ;  a  denial,  therefore,  of  atonement,  mediation, 
and  succor  by  sympathetic  love ;  and  the  conception  of  God 
derived  from  such  a  reasoning  process  as  this — from  such 
philosophical  beginnings — must  contradict  our  present  ideas 
derived  from  the  New  Testament. 

The  ideas  of  God  derived  from  nature  assume  two  forms 
in  the  ancient  and  modern  philosojDhic  mind — the  heathen 
philosopher,  using  his  lower  passions  and  appetites  as  the 
types  of  divinity,  and  modern  philosophers  using  their  mere 
reason  for  the  same  purpose,  but  both  deriving  their  ideas 
from  physical  developments,  or  laws  of  nature.  Such  concep- 
tions are  dangerous  both  to  the  underbred  and  the  overbred 
man.  The  conceptions  of  God  formed  by  philosophers  are  as 
cold  and  dead  as  those  formed  by  the  heathen  are  brutish 
and  debasing. 

But  there  is,  I  repeat,  another  root  from  which  we  may  de- 
duce id^s  of  God's  nature.  We  may  take  the  human  soul 
as  the  basis  of  those  conceptions;  not  the  material  world,  nor 
physical  laws,  but  the  human  soul.  The  human  soul  repre- 
sents nature  in  its  highest  development ;  laws  of  the  human 
mind  are  natural  laws,  and  transcendently  higher  in  moral 
value  than  all  others.  "We  may  clothe  God  with  attributes 
which  our  nobler  faculties  faintly  shadow  forth.  We  may 
conceive  him  to  have  affections  which  to  ours  are  what  the 
sun  is  to  a  candle,  both  of  which  are  fire,  and  have  that  point 
of  agreement  between  them,  although  they  differ  infinitely  in 
magnitude  and  power.  We  may  think  that  he  is  a  being  in 
whom  all  the  higher  inflections  of  human  feeling  exist ;  in 


46  The  Incarnation. 

whom  there  is  the  rise  and  subsidence,  the  coming  and  going 
of  feeling,  and  the  flexibility  and  j^lay  of  heart,  which  we  ob- 
serve in  human  life.  If,  instead  of  looking  ujjon  God  as  the 
governor  of  the  material  universe,  we  take  the  human  soul 
and  its  likeness  to  him  as  the  basis  of  our  ideas,  there  will 
spring  up  a  government  entirely  different  from  that  founded 
on  physical  laws — a  personal  and  heart  government — not  a 
legal  and  official  government ;  there  will  spring  up  from  it  a 
government  formed  on  the  pattern  of  the  family,  not  a  gov- 
ernment formed  on  the  pattern  of  the  state. 

It  may  seem  as  though  there  were  intermediate  sources 
from  which  men's  conceptions  of  God  spring,  but  what  seem 
to  be  such  are  only  mixtures  of  the  two.  In  the  employment 
of  one  we  derive  our  conceptions  of  God  from  the  material 
world ;  in  the  employment  of  the  other  we  derive  our  con- 
ceptions of  God  from  our  similarity  to  him,  and  ascribe  to  him 
all  the  inflections  of  feeling  which  belong  to  our  nature. 

These  are  the  only  two  sources  from  which  men  derive 
their  ideas  concerning  the  Divine  Being ;  and  from  the  lat- 
ter there  is  a  logical  procedure,  just  as  there  is  from  the 
former.  If,  for  instance,  we  believe  that  God  has  made  us  in 
his  own  image,  so  that  from  ourselves  we  might  infer  what 
he  is,  and  if  we  beUeve  that  he  moves  in  an  infinite  sphere 
according  to  the  same  feelings  and  laws  which  actuate  us  in 
a  limited  sphere,  then,  although  he  is  lifted  so  far  above  us 
that  we  can  not  measure  him,  we  may  logically  conclude 
that  he  is  in  sympathy  with  us,  as  we  are  in  sympathy  with 
our  children ;  that  he  is  in  sympathy  with  the  minutest  wants 
of  all  his  creatures  on  earth ;  that  he  exercises  a  particular 
providence  over  each  of  them ;  that  it  is  consistent  with  his 
nature  to  be  incarnated,  and  take  on  himself  the  conditions 
of  men,  and  to  live  with  them,  and  suffer  for  them,  and  die 
for  them,  and  rise,  ascend,  and  reign  for  them. 

If  your  conceptions  of  God  are  derived  from  the  great  and 
heartless  round  of  the  natural  world ;  if  you  worship  a  crys- 
talline God,  such  as  philosophy  deduces  from  the  material 


The  Incarnation.  47 

globe,  you  can  not  conceive  of  his  detracting  from  his  dig- 
nity by  coming  down  to  burroio,  as  you  call  it,  in  this  lower 
sphere.  If  you  believe  in  a  God  whom  mountains  represent, 
a  vast  marble  God,  that  sits  as  the  central  idol  of  the  uni- 
verse, it  is  contemptible  to  think  of  his  bowing  down  and 
coming  among  men ! 

But  if  you  have  a  conception  of  God  fashioned  from  the 
elements  revealed  In  the  human  soul ;  if  you  understand  that 
greatness  in  the  Divine  Being  does  not  mean  muscular  great- 
ness, nor  physical  greatness,  but  purity,  and  depth,  and  scope 
of  all  the  feelings  of  the  heart,  then  you  will  understand  that 
the  greater  God  is,  the  more  exquisite  will  be  the  things  he 
will  do  in  detail,  the  more  possibility  will  there  be  of  his  de- 
scending and  coming  among  men,  and  the  more  certainly  will 
he  be  expected  to  be  found  among  his  family.  As  the  moth- 
er is  found  where  her  child  cries,  and  as  the  father  is  found 
where  his  son  stumbles,  so  we  should  expect  that  if  God  is  a 
being  whom  we  may  know  from  the  analogies  of  our  own  na- 
ture, he  would  be  found  living  where  men  are  tempted,  and 
where  they  sin,  and  sufler,  and  die. 

This  is  the  New  Testament  view  of  Christ.  It  springs 
naturally  and  inevitably  from  a  God  who  is  Father.  It  can 
not  be  grafted  on  any  other  view. 

Here,  then,  are  two  distinct  philosophical  starting-points, 
both  of  which  result  in  the  construction  of  an  idea  of  God ; 
but  the  two  are  radically  different,  and  they  are  oppugnant. 
If  you  begin  with  one,  there  can  be  no  providence,  no  incarne,- 
tion,  no  atonement,  no  forgiveness,  no  Savior,  and  you  will 
be  without  the  corroboration  of  the  teachings  of  the  New 
Testament.  If  you  begin  with  the  other,  all  these  New  Tes- 
tament views  will  be  perfectly  natural,  almost  inevitable. 

The  conflicts  of  opinion  in  the  religious  world  have  arisen 
very  largely  from  the  fact  that  men  have  failed  to  recognize 
these  different  premises  and  theii*  necessary  results.  Those 
men  who  take  the  material  view  are  usually,  at  least  they  are 
often,  consistent  throughout  in  rejecting  the  peculiar  New 


48  The  Incarnation". 

Testament  view.  They  have  an  idea  of  God  which  they 
have  built  up  from  conceptions  formed  upon  the  physical 
world;  and  for  such  a  God  there  can  be  no  ascriptions  like 
those  which  are  given  to  the  Divine  Being  in  the  New  Tes- 
tament. 

But  our  eminent  theologians,  to  a  great  extent,  have  taken 
precisely  the  same  premises,  and  also  the  facts  of  the  New 
Testament,  and  undertaken  to  reconcile  them.  They  are  not 
reconcilable.  The  philosophy  of  the  material  world,  or  of 
natural  science,  makes  God  the  grand  scientific  head  of  the 
universe,  who  governs  the  world  by  laws  which  are  irreversi- 
ble, clothes  him  Avith  omnipotence,  and  makes  it  unpossible 
for  him  to  suffer,  or  to  change  his  mind.  Now,  if  you  bring 
this  view  and  that  one  set  forth  in  the  New  Testament  to- 
gether, and  compare  them,  you  will  see  that  if  one  is  true  the 
other  is  untrue.  And  of  the  countless  troubles  which  have 
beset  the  subject  of  religion,  not  a  few  have  been  the  result 
of  an  attempt  on  the  part  of  theologians  to  reconcile  the  sci- 
entific view  of  God  with  the  facts  of  the  New  Testament, 
which  make  him  a  being  represented  to  us  by  the  human 
soul. 

I  believe  in  the  God  of  the  New  Testament,  and  in  all  the 
facts  recorded  therein  concerning  him.  I  believe  him  to  be 
one  who  can  smile,  and  weep,  and  joy,  and  suffer.  I  can  not 
conceive  of  a  God,  that  my  heart  would  want,  who  could  not 
share  in  my  suffering  and  participate  in  my  joy.  I  can  not 
conceive  how  God  can  be  a  father,  and  not  have  a  heart-care 
of  his  creatures.  Can  you  be  a  father  or  a  mother,  and  not 
have  your  feelings  fluctuate  with  those  of  your  children  ?  If 
God  has  a  heart  of  stone,  he  can  hold  the  universe  in  his  bo- 
som and  not  suffer ;  but  if  he  has  a  sympathetic  and  quick- 
feeling  heart,  the  wants,  and  troubles,  and  weaknesses  of  man- 
kind must  touch  his  soul.  The  sympathies  of  God  for  man 
flow  forth,  not  as  tears  flow  from  the  eyes  of  mortals,  but  as 
the  tides  of  the  ocean  sweep  through  the  whole  world. 

This  is  the  view  I  take.     By  experience  and  the  anthro- 


The  Incarnation.  49 

pomorphic  teachings  of  the  New  Testament  —  and  for  the 
benefit  of  the  Sunday-school,  I  will  explain  that  anthropo- 
morphism is  the  representation  of  Deity  by  means  of  the  hu- 
man form  and  with  human  affections — I  have  come  to  have 
a  concej^tion  of  a  God  mindful  of  every  thing  which  concerns 
the  welfare  of  his  creatures.  There  are  those  who  say  that 
such  a  conception  is  unworthy  of  God ;  but  I  declai-e  that 
any  other  conception  is  statuistic,  and  represents  a  God  lit- 
tle better  than  the  old  stone  Juj)iters,  whose  distinguishmg 
characteristics  are  hardness  and  immobility.  Vines  may 
grow  around  a  stone,  but  the  heart  can  not.  If  our  souls  are 
to  take  hold  of  God,  we  must  believe  in  one  who  has  feelings 
analogous  to  our  own. 

We  see  in  the  religious  world  all  manner  of  inconsistencies, 
repeated  attempts  to  settle  questions  that  never  remain  set- 
tled, and  unstable  systems  that  are  like  sands  which  are  worn 
and  wasted  by  the  fluctuations  of  the  everlastmg  sea.  Men 
are  all  the  time  attempting  to  reconcile  the  view  of  a  suffer- 
ing and  sympathizing  Savior  with  the  view  of  an  unfeeling 
and  unchanging  God,  but  they  can  not  do  it.  These  dis- 
cordant elements  can  not  be  made  to  harmonize. 

Which  of  these  views  does  the  New  Testament  take?  Let 
us  read  again  the  passage  we  have  selected  for  our  text,  with 
the  context : 

"  For  both  he  that  sanctifieth,  and  they  who  are  sanctified, 
are  all  of  one" —  God  and  men  are  alike  of  one  essential  na- 
ture— "for  which  cause  he  is  not  ashamed  to  call  them  breth- 
ren, saying,  I  will  declare  thy  name  unto  my  brethren ;  in 
the  midst  of  the  church  will  I  sing  unto  thee.  And  again, 
I  will  put  my  trust  in  him.  And  again,  Behold,  I,  and  the 
children  which  God  hath  given  me.  Forasmuch,  then,  as  the 
children  are  partakers  of  flesh  and  blood,  he  also  himself  like- 
wise took  part  of  the  same ;  that  through  death  he  might  de- 
stroy him  that  had  the  power  of  death,  that  is,  the  devil ; 
and  deliver  them  who,  through  fear  of  death,  were  all  their 
lifetime  subject  to  bondage." 

n.— D 


50  The  Incarnation. 

Why,  then,  did  Christ  come  into  the  world,  and  take  the 
form  of  man  ?  Because  men  were  his  children,  because  he 
loved  them,  and  because  the  way  to  take  hold  of  them  was  to 
bring  himself  down  into  their  condition,  so  that  they  should 
be  able  to  see  him  and  feel  him,  and  thus,  by  the  power  of 
sympathy,  God  might  have  access  to  every  human  soul.  That 
is  the  reason  of  the  incarnation  of  Christ.  He  came  into  the 
world  to  seek  and  to  save  those  who  were  lost ;  and  since  to 
fijid  and  save  them  it  was  necessaiy  that  he  should  manifest 
himself  to  their  senses,  he  took  on  himself  their  form,  and 
came  among  them,  and  lived  as  they  lived. 

A  Moravian  missionary  once  went  to  the  West  Indies  to 
preach  to  the  slaves.  He  found  it  impossible  for  him  to  car- 
ry out  his  design  so  long  as  he  bore  to  them  the  relation  of  a 
mere  missionary.  They  were  driven  into  the  field  very  ear- 
ly in  the  morning,  and  returned  late  at  night  with  scarcely 
strength  to  roU  themselves  into  their  cabins,  and  in  no  con- 
dition to  be  profited  by  instruction.  They  were  savage  to- 
ward all  of  the  race  and  rank  of  their  masters.  He  deter- 
mined to  reach  the  slaves  by  becoming  himself  a  slave.  He 
was  sold,  that  he  might  have  the  privilege  of  workmg  by 
their  side,  and  preaching  to  them  as  he  worked  with  them. 
Do  you  suppose  the  master  or  the  pastor  could  have  touched 
the  hearts  of  those  miserable  slaves  as  did  that  man  who 
placed  himself  in  their  condition,  and  went  among  them,  and 
lived  as  they  lived,  sufiered  as  they  suifered,  toiled  as  they 
toiled,  that  he  might  carry  the  Gospel  to  them  ?  This  mis- 
sionary was  but  following  the  example  of  the  Lord  Jesus 
Christ,  who  took  on  him  the  nature  of  men,  and  came  among 
them,  and  lived  as  they  lived,  that  he  might  save  them  from 
their  sins. 

Do  any  think  that  this  view  of  God  is  degrading  ?  If  your 
God  is  Jupiter,  it  would  be ;  but  if  he  is  the  Father  of  the 
universe,  it  is  ennobling  and  full  of  grandeur.  The  grandest 
deeds  in  this  world  are  the  loving  condescensions  of  great 
natures  to  the  help  of  weak  ones.     No  crown  so  becomes  a 


The  Incarnatiok  51 

king  as  the  service  of  low  and  suffering  natures  by  those  that 
are  high  and  hajjpy ! 

The  magnanimity  of  love,  the  iDatience  of  love,  the  endless 
gifts  of  all  fruitful  love,  these  are  fitter  to  reveal  the  grand- 
eur of  God  than  thrones,  and  orbs,  and  the  whole  stellar  uni- 
verse !  That  he  built  the  world,  that  he  sustained  it,  this 
gives  us  a  thought  of  God  by  the  outside !  That  he  suffered 
for  it,  that  he  gave  his  life  for  it,  this  shows  us  God  within. 
Now  we  see  the  heart,  and  feel  the  disposition  ! 

Some  people  are  shocked  to  hear  it  said  that  God  died. 
But  what  do  you  mean  when  you  say  that  your  babe  died  ? 
Did  it  die  as  a  candle  dies  when  it  is  snuffed  out  ?  Did  its 
soul  go  out,  extinguished?  Do  you  mean  any  thing  more 
than  that  its  body  has  died,  while  its  spirit  lives  on?  The 
body  is  the  cage  of  the  spirit,  and  when  the  sj^irit  escapes 
from  the  body,  men  say  that  the  man  is  dead,  meaning  mere- 
ly that  the  cage  is  empty.  And  if  it  pleased  Christ  to  take 
on  him  the  form  of  man,  and  live  with  him,  why  could  not  he 
go  out  of  the  body  just  as  men  do  ?  The  separation  of  the 
soul  and  body  of  Christ  was  not  different  from  the  separation 
of  the  soul  and  body  of  a  man.  He  died  in  the  same  way 
that  all  men  die.  No  man,  in  speaking  of  the  death  of  God, 
means  that  the  spirit,  the  divine  nature,  suffered  death.  I  re- 
joice to  believe  this  truth.  Christ  was  God,  and  he  bowed 
his  head  and  died.  Men  shrink  from  this  thought  because 
they  are  so  gross,  and  judge  by  such  low  measures — because 
they  do  not  derive  their  conceptions  of  God  from  their  higher 
nature,  but  from  the  inferior  elements  and  attributes. 

There  is  nothing  that  can  enter  into  the  conception  of  man 
which  is  so  sweet  and  glorious  as  the  conduct  and  nature  of 
God  when  viewed  in  the  light  of  the  higher  ranges  of  human 
experience.  I  never  bless  God  so  much  as  when  I  think  that 
he  came  into  the  world  to  search  for  me  and  save  me ;  and 
this  fact  never  comes  to  me  as  a  living  reality  that  I  do  not 
long  to  stand,  with  all  the  intelligences  of  the  universe,  and 
say, "Thou  art  worthy  to  take  the  book,  and  to  open  the 


52  The  Incarnatiok 

seals  thereof,  and  to  receive  power,  and  riches,  and  wisdom, 
and  strength,  and  honor,  and  glory,  and  blessing."  I  can 
worship  such  a  One  !  A  throne  I  can  not  worship,  unless  it 
be  a  throne  on  which  a  heart  sits.  A  soul  I  can  worship ;  a 
head  I  can  not ;  a  hand  I  can  not ;  a  sceptre  I  can  not ;  but 
a  heai-t  I  can.  Before  a  Heart  I  can  bow  down,  and  feel  that 
in  bowing  down  I  am  forever  and  forever  lifted  up. 

This,  then,  is  the  teaching  of  the  New  Testament  in  re- 
spect to  the  Lord  Jesus  Christ :  God,  looking  in  love  upon 
his  family  on  the  earth,  descended  into  the  world,  clothed  his 
soul  in  the  habiliments  of  the  flesh,  subjected  it  to  the  condi- 
tions of  natural  law,  lived  among  men,  loved  them,  taught 
them,  sufiered  and  died  for  them,  was  raised  up  out  of  death 
and  the  grave,  went  ujd  on  high,  has  received  all  power  again, 
being  restored  to  the  glory  which  he  had  with  God  from  the 
foundation  of  the  world,  and  now  lives  to  make  intercession 
for  us.  That  is  my  creed  and  belief  in-  respect  to  the  Lord 
Jesus  Christ. 

1.  Li  view  of  this,  I  remark  that,  as  it  is  by  thepe?'so«a? 
power  of  the  Lord  Jesus  Christ  upon  the  hearts  of  his  chil- 
dren that  he  works  all  goodness  in-  them,  so  all  attemjits  to 
live  a  religious  life  which  leave  out  this  living,  personal,  pres- 
ent sympathy  of  the  Christ -heart  with  our  human  heart, 
will  be  relatively  imperfect.  Men's  lives  will  be  imperfect 
enough  at  any  rate,  but  when  they  neglect  this  vital  inspira- 
tion, it  seems  scarcely  possible  to  live  at  all  with  religious 
comfort.  Our  religious  joy  never  springs  from  the  concep- 
tion of  what  we  are,  but  of  what  God  is.  No  man's  life,  at- 
tainments, purposes,  or  virtues  can  yield  him  full  peace.  It 
is  the  conviction  that  we  are  loved  of  God,  personally,  by 
name  and  nature,  with  a  full  divine  insight  of  our  real  weak- 
ness, wickedness,  and  inferiority,  that  brings  peace.  Nor  will 
this  become  settled  and  immovable  until  men  know  and  feel 
that  God  loves  them  from  a  nature  in  himself,  from  a  divine 
tendency  to  love  the  poor  and  sinful,  that  he  may  rescue  and 
heal  them.     God  is  called  a  sun.     Plis  heart,  always  warm, 


The  Incarnation.  53 

brings  summer  to  the  most  barren  places.  He  is  inexhaust- 
ible in  goodness,  and  his  patience  is  beyond  all  human  con- 
ception. If  he  is  our  friend  and  lover,  if  he  conducts  our  life 
from  a  fidelity  that  belongs  to  his  nature,  and  not  from  rea- 
sons existing  in  us,  then  our  trust  will  stand  in  the  majesty 
and  certainty  of  divine  goodness,  and  not  in  unworthy  moral 
conditions  in  ourselves. 

It  is  not  because  God  is  indifferent  to  moral  qualities  that 
he  loves  sinners.  His  love  is  medicinal.  His  life  is  a  world- 
nursing  life.  He  cleanses  whom  he  loves  that  he  may  love 
yet  more.  God's  nature  is  infinitely  healing  and  cleansing. 
They  that  are  brought  in  contact  with  the  divine  heart  feel 
it  by  the  growth  that  instantly  begins  in  them.  And  his 
being  is  so  capacious  that  all  the  want  of  all  sinful  creatures, 
through  endless  ages,  neither  exhausts  nor  wearies  him.  Ten 
thousand  armies  might  bathe  in  the  ocean,  and  neither  sully 
its  purity  nor  exhaust  its  cleansing  power.  But  the  ocean  is 
but  a  c\\\y  by  the  side  of  God's  heart.  Realms  and  orbs  may 
bathe  and  rise  into  purity !  No  words  will  ever  hint  or 
dimly  paint  the  height,  and  depth,  and  length,  and  breadth 
of  the  love  of  Christ.  It  is  love  that  pours,  endless  and  spon- 
taneous, just  as  sunlight  does — simply  because  God  is  love ! 
By  the  side  of  Chi'ist  a  mother's  love,  that  on  earth  shines 
high  above  all  other,  as  a  star  above  night-candles,  is  in  com- 
parison like  those  glimmering,  expiring  stars  when  the  sun 
shmes  them  into  radiant  eclipse !  In  the  bosom  of  such  a 
God  there  is  salvation  for  every  one  that  will  trust  him ! 
And  what  chances,  of  safety  or  purity  are  there  for  those  who 
reject  him  ?  who  light  their  own  candle,  and  walk  in  its  pale 
glimmer,  rather  than  in  the  noonday  glory  of  God  in  Christ? 

All  attempts  to  base  a  life  of  rectitude  upon  mere  con- 
science— good  and  noble  as  conscience  is  in  its  applications 
to  secular  life ;  all  attempts  to  become  a  Christian  on  the 
ground  of  duty  to  your  convictions  of  right  and  wrong ;  all 
attempts  to  live  in  conformity  to  certain  rules,  lead  to  a 
state  of  bondage.     No  real  liberty  can  be  in  Christian  life 


5-i  The  Incarnation. 

till  Christ  turns  all  duty  into  love.  Conscience  and  law 
are  sworn  friends.  But  love  makes  performance  of  right 
so  quick  and  siDontaneous  that  law  is  always  behindhand. 
Love  does  what  law,  lagging  behind  her  glowing  steps,  tells 
sluggards  andingrates  they  must  do.  Indeed,  love  gives  to 
law  its  enactments,  and  tells  it  what  to  proclaim,  and  love  is 
the  fulfilling  of  the  law  ! 

Christian  experiences  usually  rise  from  the  smallest  be- 
ginnings. Great  and  glowing  fires  proceed  from  the  merest 
spark.  By  the  spark  the  match  is  set  on  fire.  Soon  the  blaze 
of  the  match  is  so  much  more  than  the  spark  that  the  spark 
seem-s  almost  like  nothing.  But  now  the-  match  is  touched 
to  the  shavings,  and  the  blaze  which  flashes  up  from  them  is 
so  much  larger  than  the  blaze  of  the  match  that  the  match  is 
thrown  in  the  ashes.  In  a  short  time  the  kindling  has  taken 
fire,  and  it  burns  with  so  much  more  power  than  the  shav- 
ings that  their  little  blaze  is  lost  in  its  greater  fire.  At 
length  the  wood  sends  up  a  brilliant  flame,  with  which  the 
blaze  of  the  kindling  wood  bears  no  comparison.  And  by- 
and-by  large  coals  fall  down  upon  the  hearth,  and  the  whole 
fire-place  glows,  and  the  room  is  warmed  and  ruddily  lighted. 

And  so,  when  men  begin  their  Christian  life,  it  is  but  a 
spark.  Soon  there  is  kindled  in  the  soul  some  joy,  which  is 
no  more  than  the  blaze  of  a  match.  This  is  gradually  devel- 
oped into  greater  experience,  and  at  length  the  whole  being 
begins  to  burn  and  glow  with  a  heavenly  fire.  Oftentimes 
men,  looking  back  upon  their  Christian  experience,  and  see- 
ing how  small  it  was,  say, "  I  do  not  believe  I  was  a  Chris- 
tian when  I  first  believed  myself  converted." 

Imagine  a  tree  tAVO  hundred  years  old  to  look  back  upon 
the  stages  of  growth  through  which  it  has  passed,  and  to 
say, "  I  remember  that  when  I  was  twenty  years  old  I  was 
only  so  big.  I  then  thought  I  was  an  oak;  but  when  I  com- 
pare what  I  am  now  with  what  I  was  then,  I  see  that  I  was 
not  an  oak  at  all !"    What  were  you,  then  ?  a  vine  ?  a  weed  ? 

Do  you  not  know  that  the  seed-form  and  the  full  disclosed 


The  Incarnation.  55 

form  are  the  same  in  their  nature  ?  Do  you  not  know  that 
one  is  the  legitimate  result  of  the  other  ?  The  beginnings 
of  grace  in  the  human  soul  may  not  reveal  Christ  to  the  ex- 
tent that  its  latter  stages  do,  but  they  are  all  parts  of  one 
work,  and  they  all  have  the  one  purpose  of  giving  man  a 
sense  of  his  infinite  need — need  by  weakness,  need  by  in- 
firmity, deepest  need  by  sinfulness  !  need  of  body,  need  of 
soul,  need  in  his  whole  being  ! 

But  in  a  healthy.  Christian  development,  with  this  sense 
of  need  comes  the  conviction  that  God  is  father,  and  that 
Jesus  Christ  is  his  manifestation,  coming  to  earth  to  unwrap 
his  divine  soul,  and  throw  it  about  poor,  sinful  men.  As  the 
mother  takes  the  new-born  babe,  that  can  do  nothing  but  crj^, 
and  folds  it  in  her  bosom,  there  to  find  its  food,  its  warmth, 
its  raiment,  its  every  thing,  so  God  takes  needy  souls  that  can 
only  cry  out, "  God,  be  merciful  to  me  a  sinner,"  and  wraps 
them  up  in  the  bosom  of  his  love,  there  to  find  their  food, 
their  raiment,  their  all ! 

2.  All  those  views  of  God  which  lead  you  to  go  to  him  for 
help  and  strength  arc  presumptively  true,  and  all  those  views 
of  God  which  tend  to  repress  and  drive  you  away  from  him 
are  presumptively  false. 

Any  presentation  of  God  as  a  spirit,  which  leads  men  to 
look  upon  him  as  a  being  vague  and  indefinite,  of  whom  men 
can  form  no  true  conception,  is  a  false  presentation. 

Any  pi-esentation  of  God  as  an  ofticial  personage,  who  sits, 
as  it  is  sometimes  said,  in  the  chair  of  state — as  a  mere  gov- 
ernor of  the  universe — is  a  false  presentation.  God  governs 
the  universe,  but  he  is  not  a  mere  governor.  I  may  control 
men  by  my  personal  influence,  but  I  am  not  captain.  I  am 
not  elected  to  any  thing.  I  do  not  act  under  any  written 
law  or  'constitution.  So  far  as  I  control  them,  I  do  it  by  the 
play  of  my  mind  on  theirs.  I  touch  their  interests,  their  sym- 
pathies, their  enthusiasm.  God  governs  the  universe,  not  by 
his  laws,  so  called,  but  by  Himself — by  the  direct  throb  of 
his  soul.    And,  I  repeat,  any  view  of  God  which  presents  him 


56  The  Incaknation. 

merely  as  an  official  personage,  or  in  any  way  that  leaves  out 
personality^  heart,  sympathy,  soul,  is  false  ! 

Any  ethical  system  which  teaches  that  God  is  so  pure  that 
there  is  a  vast  void  between  him  and  the  needy,  sinful  soul, 
and  which  has  a  tendency  to  make  men  fear  to  go  to  him  on 
account  of  his  great  purity,  is  a  false  system.  God's  purity 
is  one  of  his  most  glorious  attributes,  but  it  is  sometimes 
represented  by  a  way  which  slanders  and  misinterprets  his 
nature.  A  right  view  of  God  is  one  which  presents  him  as 
a  being  who  draws  us  to  him  that  we  may  be  purified,  just 
m  the  proportion  that  we  are  impure, 

"When  a  man  is  hungry,  he  looks  to  him  who  has  the  loaf. 
When  a  man  is  sick,  he  looks  for  him  who  has  the  medicine. 
When  a  man  is  perishing  in  the  stream,  and  has  struggled 
to  the  shore,  and  can  not  get  out,  he  cries  to  him  who  has 
strength.  ■  The  soul  that  is  sinful  goes  to  him  who  has  puri- 
ty, to  be  cleansed ;  and  a  view  that  presents  any  other  God 
but  one  who  says, "  Behold,  in  me  is  your  salvation,"  is  a  false 
view. 

Any  view  which  presents  God  as  a  being  whose  justice 
shall  make  sinners  who  wish  to  return  to  him  unable  to  do 
so,  is  a  false  view.  Public  sentiment  and  public  law  are  like 
ramparts  around  a  city.  As  long  as  a  man  is  inside  of  the 
ramparts,  they  defend  him ;  but  the  moment  he  is  outside  of 
them,  they  treat  him  as  an  enemy,  and  he  can  not  get  back, 
but  is  ^exposed  to  the  sweep  of  artillery.  You  might  as  well 
attempt  to  climb  up  the  steep  sides  of  Mount  Sinai  as  up  the 
human  heart  when  it  has  set  itself  to  punish  those  who  have 
done  wrong.  Public  sentiment  and  law  may  save  a  man 
before  he  has  done  wrong,  but  they  damn  him  after  he  has 
done  wrong.  But  not  so  with  God.  The  way  to  him  is 
down  hill.  Up  hill  is  down  hill  if  it  be  toward  God !  If  Ave 
are  in  danger,  in  him  is  safety.  If  we  have  done  wrong,  in 
him  is  the  remedy.  He  is  the  sun  that  shows  us,  w^hen  we 
are  in  darkness,  where  to  go ;  he  is  the  bright  and  morning- 
star  that  makes  our  da\\Ti  and  twilight  come  to  us  j  he  is  our 


The  Incaenatiojst.  57 

way ;  lie  is  oui*  staff;  lie  is  our  slieplierd ;  he  is  our  sceptred 
king  to  defend  us  from  our  adversaries ;  lie  is  all  in  all  to  all ! 

3.  Those  states  of  mind,  then,  in  us,  which  bring  us  nearest 
to  God,  and  which  bring  us  to  him  most  confidingly,  are  such 
as  honor  him  most  and  please  him  most.  There  are  a  great 
many  who  wish  they  could  please  God,  and  would  give  any 
thing  if  they  could  only  be  prepared  to  please  him.  Most 
will  you  please  him  when  you  confide  in  him ! 

When  a  man  who  is  addicted  to  drunkenness  rings  at  my 
door,  and  comes  in,  and  says  to  me, "  For  God's  sake,  if  the  e 
is  any  feeling  in  your  heart  for  a  poor  creature,  will  you  not 
pity  me  and  help  to  save  me?"  it  is  not  merely  pity  that 
fills  my  soul,  but  I  ask  myself, "  Why  did  that  man  come  to 
me  ?" 

Only  a  short  time  ago,  as  one  of  the  brethren  before  me 
will  recollect,  two  men  being  seized  with  a  desire  to  reform 
their  lives,  came  over  from  the  loAver  jiart  of  Broadway, 
where  they  worked,  and  hunted  about  until  they  found  me, 
and  asked  me  to  administer  the  pledge  to  them.  It  did  not 
do  them  so  much  good  as  it  did  me.  It  was  an  unsurj)assed 
compliment,  that  when  they  wanted  to  do  better,  my  name 
came  up  before  them,  and  they  said  of  me, "  He  is  the  man 
who  will  sympathize  with  us  and  help  us."  And  if  I  had 
said  to  them, "  You  have  violated  natural  law  and  your  own 
education ;  go  away  and  purify  yourselves,  and  when  you 
have  become  decent  and  resj^ectable  men,  report  yourselves 
to  me,  and  I  will  then  tell  you  what  I  will  do,"  would  I  not 
have  done  worse  than  they,  with  all  their  vileness  and  wick- 
edness ? 

Now,  when  you  wish  to  please  God,  treat  him  as  one  who 
feels  sorry  for  sinners;  treat  him  as  one  who  longs  to  help 
those  that  need  help;  go  to  him  confidingly,  '^o  matter 
how  bad  you  are — the  worse  the  better.  Old  Martin  Luther 
said, "I  bless  God  for  my  sins."  He  would  never  have  had 
such  a  sense  of  the  pardoning  mercy  of  God  if  he  had  not 
himself  been  sinful.     By  as  much  as  you  are  wicked,  God  is 


58  The  Incarnation. 

glorious  in  restoring  you  to  purity.  Let  him  do  for  you 
those  things  which  are  the  most  generous  and  magnanimous, 
and  that  will  please  him  best.  He  is  a  being  whose  feelings 
and  affections  move  on  such  vast  lines  of  latitude  and  longi- 
tude, that  the  more  you  presume  upon  his  goodness  and  cast 
yourself  before  him,  saying, "  I  need  a  miracle  of  grace  and 
mercy,"  the  better  he  is  pleased. 

Now  I  beseech  you  to  kindle  up  a  thought  of  what  your 
mother  would  do  if  you  were  a  sinful,  heart-broken,  discour- 
aged man,  but  repentant,  saying,  "  I  have  trod  the  thorny 
way  of  life,  and  learned  its  mischief;  can  you,  mother,  help 
me  to  begin  anew  ?"  What  mother  would  cast  away  such  a 
son  ?  What  father  would  not  receive  a  son  on  such  terms  ? 
And  if  earthly  j^arents  can  lift  themselves  up  into  feelings  of 
holy  sympathy  for  a  repentant  child,  what  must  be  the  feel- 
ings of  God  w^hen  his  children  come  to  liim  for  help  to  break 
away  from  sin,  and  to  lead  lives  of  rectitude  !  Read  the  fif- 
teenth chapter  of  Luke,  and  find  out  what  God's  feelings  are; 
and  then  say, "  I  will  arise  and  go  to  my  Father." 


III. 

f  i  s  i  n  II 3. 


Preached  in  Plymouth  Church,  Brooklym,  Sabbath  morfiing, 
January  i^th,  1866. 


Visions. 


"  Whereupon,  0  King  Agrippa,  I  was  not  disobedient  unto  the  heavenly  -vis- 
ion."— Acts,  xxvi.,  19. 

While  Paul  was  on  his  way  to  Damascus,  on  an  errand 
of  persecution,  honest,  but  wicked,  he  was  arrested  by  a  mi- 
raculous vision.  A  sudden  light,  down-shining,  filled  the  air, 
surrounded  him  and  his  company,  and  by  its  im23act  drove 
them  to  the  ground.  Then  came  those  solemn  words  of 
warning  and  of  calling.  The  apostle,  in  his  speech  to  Agrip- 
pa, declares  that  he  was  not  disobedient  to  that  calling 
through  this  wonderful  vision. 

Paul's  original  nature  had  three  domimmt  faculties — pride, 
conscience,  love ;  and  they  stood  in  that  order,  pride  giving 
the  key-note,  conscience  supplying  the  motive  power,  and 
love,  where  it  was  in  consistence  with  these,  accompanying 
them.  After  he  became  a  subject  of  renewing  grace,  these 
were  still  the  three  dominant  faculties,  but  they  stood  exact- 
ly in  the  reverse  order — love  first,  conscience  next,  and  pride 
last.  By  pride  I  do  not  mean  the  ofiensive  kind  of  pride, 
but  self-esteem — that  sense  of  one's  own  personality  which 
God  gives  as  the  inspiration  of  dignity  and  character. 

He  also  had  a  peculiarly  excitable  temperament,  such  as 
was  likely,  in  remarkable  circumstances,  to  project  his  emo- 
tions, and  to  give  them  to  him,  as  it  were,  in  the  form  of  out- 
ward truths — for  there  are  those  whose  minds  are  sensitive, 
and  are  so  organized  that  their  own  internal  feelings  become 
objective  or  outward.     What  they  feel,  they  think  they  see ; 


62  "Visions. 

and  what  their  muad  says  to  them  inside  silently,  they  fancy 
that  they  hear  said  to  them  by  some  voice  outwardly. 

I  do  not  mean  that  there  are  never  times  when  voices 
sound  that  are  voices ;  I  do  not  mean  that  there  are  not  di- 
vine influences  that  come  to  us  from  without ;  what  I  mean 
is,  that  there  are  cases  in  which  men  think  that  they  hear 
sounds,  but  do  not  hear  any  except  those  that  are  produced 
within  themselves ;  and  that  there  are  men  who  know  that 
they  see  visions,  but  who  behold  nothing,  the  state  of  their 
mind  being  such  that,  under  given  circumstances,  things 
come  to  them  seemingly  from  without,  although  really  they 
are  from  Avithin. 

Now  the  constitution  which  is  favorable  to  this  peculiarity 
of  experience  belongs  eminently  to  our  moral  nature.  The 
power  of  excitability,  and,  if  you  please,  super-excitability,  in 
such  a  degree  as,  particularly  in  connection  with  the  reason 
and  the  moral  sense,  shall  make  things  that  are  invisible  vis- 
ible to  us,  is  one  of  the  most  important  and  one  of  the  most 
wonderful  of  the  constituent  elements  of  the  human  mind. 
It  may  be  classed  among  those  things  that  are  evidences 
that  the  mind  shall  yet  redeem  itself  from  its  materiality, 
and  shall  rise  above  matters  of  sense,  and  live  m  a  purely 
spiritual  condition. 

God  selects  for  his  instruments  those  who  are  already  con- 
stituted in  harmony  with  the  line  of  Avork  to  be  performed. 
David  was  a  poet  born ;  and  he  was  selected  to  be  the  sweet 
sino-er  of  Israel,  because  his  duty  would  be  in  harmony  with 
the  constituent  elements  of  his  mind.  Moses  was  essentially 
of  the  nature  of  a  statesman — comprehensive,  just,  wise,  and 
he  had  that  most  rare  quality  that  belongs  to  the  statesman, 
the  power  to  balance  the  sense  of  absolute  right  and  justice 
with  a  sympathy  for  the  relatively  imperfect  conditions  of 
human  life.  Therefore  he  was  chosen  to  be  a  law-giver. 
Isaiah  was  the  prophet,  because  he  was  so  entirely  adapted 
to  the  work  of  a  j^rophet  by  his  birth-gifts.  Paul  was  elect, 
from  birth,  by  his  fitness  for  the  apostolic  work. 


Visions.  63 

This  is  not  denying  a  divine  inspiration,  but  simply  af- 
firming that,  in  the  selection  of  those  who  shall  be  prepared 
for  great  works,  God  is  pleased  to  select  those  who  are  al- 
ready adapted  by  nature  to  such  uses — to  legislation,  those 
who  by  nature  are  wise ;  to  poetry,  those  who  are  naturally 
poets ;  to  eloquence,  those  who  are  gifted  with  fluent  speech ; 
to  activity  and  practical  labor,  those  who  are  adapted  to 
manage  affairs. 

What,  then,  is  the  difference  between  things  known  to  be 
true  by  the  natural  operation  of  the  mind,  and  things  known 
to  be  true  by  supernatural  influence  ?  In  the  quality  of  the 
things  known  there  is  no  difference.  Where  a  thing  is  known 
to  be  true,  it  is  no  more  true  because  God  said  it  than  be- 
cause a  man  said  it.  Truth  is  truth,  whoever  says  it.  But 
it  makes  a  great  difference  in  the  process  of  ascertaining  the 
truth  whether  I  receive  it  as  accredited  by  the  testimony  of 
man,  or  as  accredited  by  the  testimony  of  God. 

We  have  a  familiar  instance  of  the  difference  between  a 
thing  that  is  authoritative  and  one  that  is  not.  A  private, 
in  the  midst  of  battle,  says  to  the  men  of  his  regiment,  "Look 
to  that  charge  upon  our  flank:  we  ought  to  change  front." 
Not  a  man  in  the  ranks  stirs.  This  private  is  right,  but  a 
private  has  no  authority  to  speak.  But  a  brigadier  general 
passing,  and  hearing  the  remark,  and  seeing  the  state  of  af- 
fairs, gives  orders  in  exact  accordance  with  it,  and  instantly 
he  is  obeyed.  The  truth  is  the  same  in  the  mouth  of  the 
private  and  in  the  mouth  of  the  general  j  but  one  speaks  by 
authority,  and  the  other  does  not. 

Now  prophets  and  apostles  spoke  by  authority ;  and  when 
sjjoken,  the  truths  they  uttered  had  a  claim  upon  the  world 
which  they  would  not  have  had  if  they  had  been  spoken  by 
persons  that  were  not  authenticated.  They  would  have  been 
as  true  in  the  one  case  as  in  the  other,  but  they  would  not 
have  had  the  same  effect.  Divinely  attested  truth  is  more 
powerful  than  truth  that  stands  merely  upon  its  own  merits. 

Paul  was  not  alone  subject  to  this  facility  of  vision,  al- 


64  YisiONs. 

though  he  was  subject  to  it  in  a  greater  degree  than  any  of  the 
other  apostles.  You  will  recollect  Peter's  vision  of  the  sheet, 
and  his  vision  of  the  angel  that  came  to  the  prison  and  led 
him  forth.  You  will  recollect  John's  AjDOcalyj^tic  vision — 
the  most  remarkable  one  of  which  there  is  any  account  in  the 
mspired  record.  And  Paul,  on  more  than  one  occasion,  saw 
visions.  Indeed,  he  was  accustomed  to  them.  He  was  the 
most  practical,  he  had  most  eminently  of  all  the  quality  of 
common  sense,  he  was  the  most  logical  of  all  the  apostles, 
and  the  least  likely  of  any  of  them,  aj^parently,  to  have  been 
a  man  subject  to  visions ;  and  yet,  more  than  any  of  them,  or 
all  of  them  together,  he  seems  to  have  been  subject  to  these 
mental  exaltations.  You  will  recollect  how,  in  a  vision,  he 
saw  the  men  of  Macedonia,  and  heard  them  say  "  Come  over 
and  help  us."  You  will  recollect  his  brief — too  brief  record  of 
certain  transcendent  experiences,  in  which  he  seemed  to  him- 
self to  be  lifted  into  paradise,  and  heard  things  which  it  was 
impossible  to  utter.  "  Not  lawful  to  utter"  it  is  in  our  ver- 
sion, but  im]possihle  to  utter  is  a  better  rendering.  And  then 
there  was  the  vision  that  he  saw  while  going  to  Damascus, 

You  may  say, "  Can  it  be  safe  for  a  man,  in  so  momentous 
a  matter  as  religion,  to  follow  his  own  eccentricities  of  expe- 
rience, and  to  place  reliance  upon  these  visionary  states  of 
mind  ?  Is  it  right  for  the  world  to  be  dependent  for  its  fun- 
damental ideas  of  truth  and  rectitude  upon  the  visions  of  su- 
per-excited minds  ?  Is  not  this  very  capacity  to  see  visions 
an  element  of  fanaticism  ?  And  if  seeing  visions  is  a  thing 
to  be  desired,  is  not  the  lunatic  asylum  to  be  prized  as  the 
very  home  of  inspiration  ?  For  do  they  not  see  more  vis- 
ions, and  dream  more  dreams,  there  than  any  where  else  ?" 

I  reply  that  a  mere  vision  was  never  more  than  a  sugges- 
tion to  the  apostles  and  the  prophets.  It  never  was  author- 
itative. It  was  only  a  picture  presented  to  them.  The  vis- 
ions of  the  apostles  furnished  new  materials  for  their  judg- 
ments, but  never  superseded  their  judgments.  They  furnish- 
ed new  materials  for  their  moral  sense,,  but  never  superseded 


Visions.  65 

their  moral  sense.  They  were  pictures  held  out  to  their 
minds  for  the  sake  of  awakening  thought,  and  imagination, 
and  conscience ;  but  their  conduct  depended  upon  their  sub- 
sequent conclusions  founded  on  what  they  saw. 

Let  us  review  some  instances. 

You  will  recollect  the  case  of  Peter,  how,  after  he  prayed, 
there  was  a  vision  of  a  sheet  let  down  for  him,  and  how,  not 
understanding  it,  he  refused  to  "  kill  and  eat,"  because  he  was 
not  accustomed  to  partake  of  animals  that  were  pronounced 
unclean  by  the  customs  of  the  Jews.  You  will  recollect  the 
whole  story  of  the  vision — how  he  followed  the  messengers 
sent  to  him  by  Cornelius ;  how  he  went  down  to  see  him ; 
how  he  conformed  to  the  requirements  of  the  circumstances ; 
how  he  came  back  and  related  all  the  particulars  to  his  breth- 
ren ;  and  how,  after  many  days  and  much  thinking,  he  at 
last  accepted  the  truth,  which  was  so  simple  that  we  smile 
to  think  that  it  required  a  heavenly  vision  and  a  progressive 
disciple  to  bring  about  an  understanding  of  it,  namely,  that 
Christ  might  be  preached  to  the  Gentiles  !  But  the  men  that 
have  needed  four  years  of  bloodshed  to  teach  them  that  a 
negro  is  a  child  of  God,  do  not  need  to  be  told  how  hard  it 
is,  in  the  face  of  prejudice,  to  learn  the  simplest  truths  !  You 
have  just  begun  to  look  upon  the  negro  as  an  immortal  be- 
ing, and  as  having  rights  that  you  are  bound  to  respect. 
The  cases  are  analogous.  It  required  a  miraculous  dispensa- 
tion to  teach  the  Jew — who  was  a  Saxon  all  over — that  the 
Gentiles — who  were  in  the  relation  of  negroes  to  their  preju- 
dices— had  their  rights,  among  which  was  the  right  of  hav- 
ing the  truth  of  God  preached  to  them.  But  when  this  vis- 
ion came  to  Peter  he  did  not  accejDt  it  at  once.  He  did  not 
understand  it  in  the  beginning.  He  thought  about  it,  and 
reasoned  about  it,  and  prayed  about  it,  and  went  on  his  jour- 
ney watching  the  indications  of  Providence,  and  at  last  he 
saw  the  truth,  and  acquiesced  in  it.  The  vision,  then,  was 
not  a  thing  that  he  received  without  subjecting  it  to  the  test 
of  reason,  and  common  sense,  and  conscience. 

H.— E 


QQ  Visions. 

Take  the  instance  of  Paul's  conversion,  with  which  we  are 
concerned  this  morning.  If  you  were  to  read  only  the  ac- 
count that  is  given  in  the  26th  chapter  of  Acts,  you  would 
perhaps  suppose  that,  immediately  after  the  heavenly  vision 
fell  upon  him,  he  commenced  a  course  of  obedience  to  it ;  hut 
if  you  turn  to  the  9th  chapter  of  Acts  you  will  see  that  there 
was  a  long  period  between  the  hour  that  he  was  cast  down 
and  the  time  that  he  entered  upon  his  Christian  course.  He 
lay  for  three  days,  after  he  was  brought  into  Damascus,  as  it 
were  stunned. 

"  They  led  hma  by  the  hand,  and  brought  him  into  Damas- 
cus. And  he  was  three  days  without  sight,  and  neither  did 
eat  nor  drink." 

He  was  as  dead. 

"  And  there  was  a  certain  disciple  at  Damascus  named  An- 
anias ;  and  to  him  said  the  Lord  in  a  vision" — for  one  vision 
was  made  to  throw  light  upon  another,  it  seems — "  Ananias. 
And  he  said.  Behold,  I  am  here,  Lord.  And  the  Lord  said 
unto  him.  Arise,  and  go  into  the  street  that  is  called  Straight, 
and  inquire  in  the  house  of  Judas  for  one  called  Saul  of  Tar- 
sus ;  for  behold,  he  prayeth." 

Some  do  not  believe  that  there  is  such  a  thing  as  the  direct 
communication  of  God  with  the  soul :  what  will  they  make 
of  that  ? 

"  For  behold,  he  prayeth,  and  hath  seen  in  a  vision  a  man 
named  Ananias  coming  in  and  putting  his  hand  on  him,  that 
he  might  receive  his  sight." 

There  Paul  had  a  wonderful  vision  which  we  should  have 
known  nothing  about  if  it  had  not  been  for  this  incidental 
revelation  of  it. 

"  Then  Ananias  answered,  Lord,  I  have  heard  by  many  of 
this  man,  how  much  evil  he  hath  done  to  thy  saints  at  Jeru- 
salem ;  and  here  he  hath  authority  from  the  chief  priests  to 
bind  all  that  call  on  thy  name.  But  the  Lord  said  unto  him, 
Go  thy  way ;  for  he  is  a  chosen  vessel  unto  me,  to  bear 
my  name  before  the  gentiles  and  kings,  and  the  children  of 


Visions.  67 

Israel.  For  I  will  show  him  how  great  things  he  must  suf- 
fer for  my  name's  sake.  And  Ananias  went  his  way,  and  en- 
tered into  the  house ;  and,  putting  his  hands  on  him,  said, 
Brother  Saul,  the  Lord  (even  Jesus  that  appeared  unto  thee 
in  the  way  as  thou  earnest)  hath  sent  me,  that  thou  mightest 
receive  thy  sight,  and  be  filled  with  the  Holy  Ghost.  And 
immediately  there  fell  from  his  eyes  as  it  had  been  scales ; 
and  he  received  sight  forthwith,  and  arose,  and  was  baptized. 
And  when  he  had  received  meat  he  was  strengthened.  Then 
was  Saul  certain  days  with  the  disciples  which  were  at  Da- 
mascus." 

Now  all  this  shows  that,  after  this  miraculous  vision,  Paul 
did  not  sprmg  to  his  feet  and  instantly  commence  preaching, 
as  if  inspired  with  a  blind  enthusiasm.  At  first  he  was  in  a 
condition  of  bewilderment ;  then  he  was  under  the  mstruction 
of  Ananias;  then  he  was  in  a  state  that  allowed  the  law  of 
thought  and  the  law  of  moral  feeling  to  work;  and  at  length 
he  knew  how  to  act  upon  the  convictions  of  duty  which  had 
been  wrought  in  him. 

The  vision,  then,  was  but  an  extraordinary  divine  method 
of  imiDressing  his  mind  with  truths  which  should  have  influ- 
enced him  from  natural  causes,  but  which,  for  various  rea- 
sons, failed  to  do  so. 

It  appears,  therefore,  that  the  apostles  acted  not  upon  vis- 
ions and  dreams,  but  upon  certain  truths  which  these  visions 
brought  to  light.  These  extraordinary  sights  stimulated  the 
mind  to  the  proper  use  of  its  natural  faculties,  and  the  results 
in  conduct  flowed  therefrom.  All  the  truths  that  were  re- 
ported by  vision  or  by  dream  to  the  mind  were  subjected  to 
the  reason  and  to  the  moral  sense,  and  became  the  basis  of 
conduct. 

It  is  this  that  distinguishes  between  fanaticism  and  ration- 
al inspiration.  The  one  is  an  unreasoning  impulse ;  the  oth- 
er is  an  impulse  inspiring  the  individual  to  a  higher  degree 
of  moral  feeling,  and  to  an  intenser  intellectual  activity.  Fa- 
naticism does  not  reason ;  it  only  feels.    Divine  visions  cause 


68  Visions. 

men  to  reason  more  actively — not  less.  Fanaticism  obscures 
the  understanding.  Divine  visions  make  it  brighter  and 
clearer.  Fanaticism  subjects  a  man  purely  and  merely  to 
his  own  internal  impulses.  Divine  visions  emj^loy  a  man's 
internal  impulses  to  make  him  more  conscious  of  the  truths 
of  nature,  of  history,  and  of  God's  moral  government. 

The  questions  are  very  natural  at  this  point,  Are  visions 
ended  ?  Were  they  peculiar  to  the  opening  of  Christianity  ? 
Let  us  look  a  little  more  into  that  constitution  out  of  which 
visions  spring.  What  is  that  nature  of  the  mind  which 
gives  rise  to  them  ? 

Many  of  you  are  commercial  men.  Your  affairs  are  en- 
tangled. There  is  some  business  transaction  that  is  involved, 
and  you  do  not  see  how  to  disentangle  it.  You  talk  with  A 
and  B,  but  no  light  is  thrown  upon  it.  It  is  confused,  and 
troublesome,  and  irritating,  and  so  it  remains  for  days  and  per- 
haps weeks.  At  last  there  is  an  hour  in  which — you  can  not 
tell  why — like  a  flash  the  whole  thing  opens  on  the  mind,  and 
you  see  exactly  how  it  lies,  and  how  to  take  hold  of  it ;  and 
you  say, "  I  never  had  a  thing  come  to  me  more  clearly  in 
all  my  life." 

You  will  ask  me,  "  Is  that  a  vision  ?"  That  depends  upon 
what  you  mean  by  a  vision.  It  is  nothing  more  than  is  nat- 
ural to  the  human  faculties.  For  there  are  three  states  in 
which  an  emotion  may  exist :  First,  there  is  a  state  so  low 
that  only  under  the  force  of  external  excitement  is  the  facul- 
ty able  to  act.  Secondly,  there  is  an  intermediate  state,  in 
which  the  faculty  is  able,  in  a  limited  degree,  to  produce  its 
own  activity.  Thirdly,  there  is  a  state  in  which  an  emotion 
is  luminous,  and  automatically  throws  itself  forward  into  the 
understanding,  and  sees  things  almost  as  if  they  were  visible 
and  objective.  This  higher  action  of  the  faculties  is  what  I 
understand  to  be  the  condition  essential  to  the  seeing  of  vis- 
ions. Some  men  are  organized  so  as  to  be  but  little  suscept- 
ible to  these  states  of  vision ;  others  are  more  delicately  or- 
ganized.    Some  can  rise  easily  into  a  state  of  exaltation^ 


Visions.  ,  69 

when  the  mind  seems  to  flash  upon  and  irradiate  whatever 
subject  it  considers.  Of  those  that  can  do  it,  some  can  do 
it  more  easily  than  others,  and  some  who  are  fortunately  en- 
dowed can  do  it  without  difficulty.  Where  men  are  in  a 
state  in  which  their  faculties  are  highly  susceptible,  they 
are  in  a  state  which  is  favorable  to  the  seeing  of  visions. 

Now  if  the  question  is,  Are  there  now,  in  our  age,  authori- 
tative visions  superinduced  upon  the  faculties  of  the  mind  ? 
I  answer,  No,  there  are  no  authoritative  ones.  There  is 
no  pope,  no  bishop,  no  priest,  no  prophet,  put  in  authority. 
There  is  no  voice  from  the  Temj^le  that  men  are  bound  im- 
plicitly to  obey.  God,  in  these  latter  days,  having  raised  up, 
by  centuries  of  instruction,  those  materials  from  which  men 
can  form  just  judgments,  lays  upon  them  the  responsibility 
of  forming  those  judgments,  and  no  longer  sends  authenti- 
cated prophets  and  priests  divinely  commissioned  to  speak 
to  men  as  with  the  voice  of  God,  That  which  was  neces- 
sary for  the  infantile  condition  of  the  race  is  no  longer  nec- 
essary, and  has  passed  away. 

But  the  constituent  element  of  mind  on  which  were 
based  authenticated  visions  has  not  ceased.  We  have  vis- 
ions still,  and  visions  meant  for  the  same  purpose  that  vis- 
ions were  in  former  times,  only  we  are  not  authorized  to 
say, "  This  vision  is  given  me  for  the  sake  of  the  nation." 
If  you  have  a  vision,  it  is  for  your  own  guidance ;  and  it 
must  be  authenticated  in  your  case,  as  the  apostle's  visions 
were  authenticated ;  you  must  subject  it  to  the  test  of  rea- 
son and  the  moral  sense.  If  you  find  that  the  view  present- 
ed is  true,  not  simply  because  the  vision  presented  it,  but  on 
its  own  evidence,  then  the  vision  is  to  you  as  trustworthy 
an  inspiration  as  the  apostle's  visions  were  to  him.  It  is 
your  personal  property ;  it  is  not  official  property.  As  men 
grow  wiser  and  wiser,  official  visions  will  be  fewer  and 
fewer,  and  personal  visions  will  be  more  and  more  frequent. 
With  the  advance  of  intelligence,  visions  become  the  right 
of  individuals,  and  not  the  right  of  representative  persons, 
who  stand  in  an  official  relation  to  the  race. 


70  .  Visions. 

Visions,  then,  are  not  ended.  The  biographies  of  eminent 
Christians  are  full  of  testimonials  of  hours  of  luminousness. 
Wherever  a  man  rises  to  that  state  in  which  he  seems  for  a 
moment  to  have  passed  from  under  the  influence  of  physical 
things,  and  to  have  come  under  the  influence  of  great  eter- 
nal realities,  he  is  in  a  condition  substantially  like  that  which 
the  prophets  were  in  when  they  had  their  visions.  But  his 
visions  are  not  authoritative  except  to  himself;  and  they  are 
not  authoritative  to  him  until  he  has  done  as  Paul,  and  Peter, 
and  John,  and  Isaiah,  and  David  did,  namely,  until  he  has 
taken  the  substance  of  what  seems  to  be  the  revelation,  if  it 
be  a  revelation,  or  the  impression,  if  it  be  an  impression,  and 
subjected  it  to  the  power  of  reason  and  conscience.  If  by 
that  test  he  finds  the  vision  to  be  true,  it  is  thereafter  to  be 
a  spur  and  a  stimulus  to  him  in  following  the  truth. 

What,  then,  is  Christian  duty  in  respect  to  these  vision- 
hours  ? 

But  I  shall  be  asked  whether  such  intense  excitement,  only 
occasionally  felt,  is  as  useful  as  would  be  an  even  and  mod- 
erate rationality  ?  Would  it  not  be  a  great  deal  better  if 
men  should  always  live  in  such  a  state  as  not  to  need  special 
experiences  of  this  kind  ? 

Would  it  not  be  better  if  men  were  diflferent  from  what 
they  are  ?  Would  it  not  be  better  if  they  did  not  have  to 
sleep  ?  I  do  not  know,  nor  am  I  interested  to  reason  on  that 
subject.  I  know  that  periodicity  is  a  law  of  man's  nature. 
It  is  not  exceptional.  It  is  normal.  And  I  know  that,  al- 
though moral  luminousness  may  be  augmented,  and  although 
some  forms  of  it  may  abide  with  us,  so  that  we  may  be  chil- 
dren of  light,  yet,  even  under  those  circumstances,  there  will 
be  some  experiences  that  are  higher  than  others.  And  it  is 
folly  to  say  "  Why  not  live  independent  of  the  special  hours  ?" 
Why  not  depend  upon  both  these  and  ordinary  hours  ?  Why 
not  make  the  common  experience  as  perfect  as  you  can,  taking 
this  as  the  substratum  of  normal  activity  ;  and  then,  if  God 
gives  you  besides  intense  views  opening  the  heaven,  and  jjour- 


Visions.  71 

ing  down  light  that  augments  your  sensibility,  and  widens 
your  range  of  thought,  and  increases  your  sense  of  truth, 
take  that  too  ?  They  are  not  antagonistic.  They  are  co-or- 
dinate. 

Because  a  tree  bears  on  an  average  ten  bushels  of  apples  a 
year,  ought  the  fanner  to  object  that  now  and  then  there  is 
an  unusually  fruitful  year  in  which  it  bears  twenty-five  bush- 
els ?  Because  certain  flowers  ordinarily  are  single,  ought  a 
man  to  object  that  sometimes  those  flowers  are  double?  Be- 
cause clover  generally  comes  with  three  leaves,  ought  a  man 
to  object  that  sometimes  it  comes  with  four  or  five  leaves  ? 
And  because  the  results  of  thought  and  experience  are  the 
ordmary  concomitants  of  life,  ought  men  to  object  that  once 
in  a  while  it  pleases  God  to  give  them  a  sensibility  by  which 
things  are  lo£)ked  at  in  a  higher  light  than  they  are  wont 
to-be? 

There  are  special  reasons  why  we  should  have,  so  far  as  it 
is  in  our  power  to  procure  them,  these  hours  of  vision. 

We  should  have  them,  first,  because  the  natural  course  of 
life  tends  to  routine,  and  because  the  natural  tendency  of  rou- 
tine is  to  dullness.  What  grows  in  a  road  ?  Dust,  and  noth- 
ing but  dust.  Grass  does  not  grow  there ;  flowers  do  not  grow 
there ;  harvests  do  not  grow  there.  Where  there  is  the  con- 
stant tramping  of  feet,  and  the  incessant  rolling  of  wheels, 
there  is  dust  and  dullness.  And  as  it  is  in  a  highway  ot 
travel,  so  it  is  in  the  highway  of  thought  and  duty.  The 
constant  repetition  of  any  line  of  thought  or  feeling  produces 
dullness.  That  is  the  objection  to  ritualistic  services,  and  it 
is  an  objection  that  can  not  be  overcome.  They  are  some- 
times useful,  and  perhaps  necessary ;  but  the  great  objection 
to  them  is  that  by  constant  repetition  men  lose  the  power 
of  vivid  appreciation.  And  it  is  true  that  all  of  human  life 
tends  to  dullness. 

These  hours  of  exaltation  and  luminousness  are  needed  to 
resist  moral  stupor  and  to  compensate  dullness. 

Men  insensibly  aflect  each  other,  and  go  up  or  down  in 


72  Visions. 

common.  A  sort  of  average  conduct  is  tacitly  agreed  upon, 
and  men  are  content  if  they  do  not  fall  below  it.  They  are 
satisfied  to  be  about  as  truthful,  about  as  virtuous,  and  about 
as  morally  active  as  men  ordinarily  are,  and  the  standard  of 
society  becomes  the  standard  of  each  individual.  When 
a  man  who  has  large  endowments  conforms  his  life  to  that 
of  the  average  of  men,  he  demeans  and  belittles  himself. 
When  a  man  that  has  power  of  genius  above  his  fellows 
seeks  only  to  go  about  as  high  as  men  in  general,  it  is  as  if 
an  eagle  should  take  pattern  from  sparrows  and  doves.  God 
gave  the  eagle  wings  that  they  might  fan  the  greatest  heights, 
and  spread  themselves  nearer  the  sun  than  those  of  any  oth- 
er bird.  For  the  eagle  to  play  sparrow  or  dove  is  mean 
enough.  And  for  men  that  are  capable  of  large  thought,  of 
noble  enthusiasm,  and  of  soaring  high  in  the  realm  of  imagi- 
nation, to  reduce  themselves  to  the  average  condition  of 
those  by  whom  they  are  surrounded,  is  pitiable.  Yet  that 
is  the  tendency.  Every  body  is  thinking,  "  So  that  I  keep 
step  with  my  regiment  in  social  matters,  so  that  I  do  not 
fall  below  the  average  line  of  character  and  conduct  in  so- 
ciety, I  shall  do  well  enough." 

Then,  the  natural  efiect  of  care,  of  business,  of  hardness  of 
heart,  of  continual  strife  with  the  world,  is  to  literalize  men, 
to  minify  them,  and  to  lower  them.  The  usages  of  life  and 
the  infirmities  of  human  nature  cause  men  to  gravitate.  It 
is  a  piteous  thing  to  see  men  indurated.  The  process  is  sad. 
The  indications,  as  they  come  out  here  and  there,  are  symp- 
toms, as  it  were,  that  mark  the  coming  death  of  something 
noble  in  men.  If  the  flood  is  allowed  to  sweep  on  without 
obstruction,  if  the  maelstrom  is  allowed  to  carry  down  unre- 
sisted all  that  comes  within  its  reach,  fearful  indeed  must  be 
the  consequences. 

Since  men  are  in  a  world  where  the  whole  course  of  things 
tends  to  secularize  and  degrade  whatever  is  angelic  in  them, 
how  blessed  a  thing  it  is  that  there  is  in  the  human  constitu- 
tion that  out  of  which  spring  these  heavenly  visions  !    Espe- 


Visions.  73 

cially  in  the  case  of  men  whose  minds  all  the  week  long  have 
been  occupied  with  physical  things,  how  blessed  it  is  that 
they  should  have  times,  as  of  a  Sunday  morning,  when  they 
go  back  in  imagination  to  the  period  of  childhood,  from  the 
purity  of  which  they  have  sadly  departed !  It  is  as  if  they 
were  standing  before  a  picture.  A  picture?  N'o,  a  pano- 
rama. A  panorama  ?  No,  a  vision.  They  call  to  mind  the 
sweet,  impatient  hours  of  yearning.  They  remember  bow 
dear  to  them  were  father  and  mother,  and  brother  and  sister. 
They  recollect  how  beautifully  all  things  blossomed  in  antic- 
ipation. For  a  great  hirsute,  rough  man,  that  has  killed  con- 
science, and  trampled  down  taste,  and  perverted  all  the  best 
instincts  of  the  soul,  to  be  caught  up  m  a  vision,  and  car- 
ried back  to  his  childhood,  and  made  to  see  his  whole  past 
life,  and  constrained  to  ask  himself,  as  he  looks  at  his  early 
innocence  and  his  present  demoralized  condition,  "  Was  I 
that  ?  and  am  I  this  ?"  it  is  like  the  voice  of  God  in  judgment. 
And  these  vision-hours,  whichever  way  they  come — and  they 
come  in  almost  every  conceivable  way — sometimes  through 
the  intellect ;  sometimes  through  the  affections ;  sometimes 
through  the  moral  sentiments ;  sometimes  through  imagina- 
tion; sometimes  through  the  gush  of  sounds  and  music; 
sometimes  through  the  inspiration  of  pictures,  and  sometimes 
through  natural  scenery — how  we  need  them :  we  that  are 
made  sordid  by  care ;  we  that  are  weighed  down  and  made 
beasts  of  burden  so  often ;  we  who,  though  the  sons  of  God, 
are  so  often  led  captive  of  the  devil ! 

The  depressions  of  life  require  some  such  stimulus  and 
inspiration.  These  vision-hours  are  natural  antagonisms  of 
whatever  tends  to  depress  the  vital  power  of  hoi^e  and 
faith.  Many  forms  of  sickness  make  the  heavens  as  sack- 
cloth, and  beat  the  earth  fine  as  dust.  Disappointments 
tend  to  sour  us,  to  imbitter  us,  and,  above  all  things,  to 
break  the  staff  of  hope.  A  man  that  has  lost  moral  sense 
is  like  a  man  in  battle  with  both  of  his  legs  shot  off:  he 
has  nothincT  to  stand  on.     A  man  that  has  lost  faith  is  like 


74  Visions. 

a  man  in  battle  with  both  his  arms  severed  from  his  body : 
he  has  nothing  to  work  with.  A  man  that  has  lost  hope  is 
like  a  man  in  battle,  both  of  whose  eyes  have  been  shot  out : 
he  can  not  see.  A  man  that  has  neither  moral  sense,  nor 
faith,  nor  hope,  is  not  a  man :  he  is  dead.  And  in  the  strug- 
gle of  life  we  sometimes  haA^e  nothing  to  stand  on ;  nothing 
to  reach  out  with ;  nothing  to  look  forward  with.  But  if 
there  are  certain  hours  for  such  vision  states  as  I  have  de- 
scribed ;  if  God  inspires  the  constituent  elements  of  our 
minds  now  and  then  with  celestial  visions,  that  we  may 
have  higher  views,  loftier  ideas,  nobler  impulses,  how  bless- 
ed a  provision  it  is  ! 

We  need,  then,  something  that  shall  flame  up  above  the 
embers,  and  blaze  in  the  chimney  of  human  life ;  we  need  vi- 
tal and  startling  impressions  on  the  better  side  of  our  nature, 
that  the  predominance  which  physical  realities  tend  to  gain 
over  us  may  be  overcome. 

Men  are  like  rivers  in  whiter.  Go  and  look  at  the  Con- 
necticut River  to-day.  It  is  frozen  over.  There  is  a  flood 
of  water  to  be  sure,  but  it  is  far  down  beneath  the  cov- 
ering that  hides  it ;  and  every  hour,  as  whiter  goes  on,  it  is 
radiating  more  and  more  of  its  heat ;  and  the  crust  grows 
thicker  and  thicker,  though  already  it  is  so  thick  that  busi- 
ness has  taken  possession  of  it,  and  swiftly  darts  to  and  fro 
upon  it.  The  river  is  under  the  dominion  of  ice,  and  can  not 
free  itself  therefrom.  The  sun  shines  upon  the  superincum- 
bent mass,  and  it  grows  porous ;  yet  so  thick  is  it  that  the 
sun  does  not  melt  it.  But  by-and-by,  afar  ofi",  the  rains  be- 
gin to  descend ;  for  it  is  March.  God's  southern  winds  come 
beating  against  the  northern  cold ;  the  clouds  are  condensed ; 
they  turn  to  showers;  they  fall  upon  the  hills  or  ujDon  the 
mountains ;  and  these  all  sweep  down  their  treasures  to  the 
valley ;  and  they  are  borne  along  and  emptied  into  the  chan- 
nel of  the  river;  and  the  ice,  strongly  buoyed,  is  lifted  up  and 
fractured  into  vast  sheets ;  and  the  freshet  takes  them,  and, 
like  a  mighty  mill,  grinds  them  to  atoms  as  it  rushes  along. 


Visions.  75 

And  now,  in  this  glorious  and  blessed  resurrection,  see  how 
the  water  begins  to  rise,  and  send  to  the  bottom  that  which 
has  been  its  oppressor,  till  at  last,  after  one,  or  two,  or  three 
days  of  such  terrific  conflict,  though  there  may  be  on  its 
banks  some  remains  of  the  ice,  you  Avill  see  the  emancipated 
and  disenchanted  stream  flowing  gayly  ou  without  crust  or 
barrier. 

It  is  just  so  with  men's  souls.  We  need  these  freshets, 
these  glorious  overflowings  of  the  channels  of  the  soul,  to 
cleanse  away  wintry  obstructions,  to  break  up  the  habits,  to 
clear  us  out,  that  the  soul  may  be  as  the  river  of  life,  and 
that  God's  face  may  be  reflected  in  the  clear  surface  thereof. 

Men,  then,  should  mark  the  occasions  of  these  visions,  in 
order  that  they  may  seek  them.  They  come,  sometimes, 
without  our  knowing  what  brings  them.  There  is  always  a 
cause,  but  we  are  not  always  conscious  of  it.  I  have  had 
some  Sabbath  mornings  that  rose  ujDon  me  with  healing  in 
their  wings,  after  a  troubled  week.  I  can  scarcely  tell  why 
I  was  troubled,  but  the  mind's  fruit  was  not  sweet.  Yet, 
when  the  Sabbath  morning  came,  I  no  sooner  looked  down 
upon  the  bay,  and  across  at  my  morning  signal — the  star  on 
Trinity  Church,  symbolic  of  the  star  that  hung  over  the  spot 
where  the  child  Jesus  lay — than  I  felt  that  it  was  an  elect 
morning.  And  when  I  went  into  the  street,  all  the  trees — if 
it  was  summer — were  murmuring  to  me ;  all  the  birds  were 
singing  to  me  ;  the  clouds  were  bearing  messages  to  me ; 
every  thing  was  kindred  to  me.  All  my  soul  rejoiced,  I  do 
not  know  why.  I  had  met  with  no  imusual  good  fortune.  I 
had  been  moody  all  the  week,  perhaps.  My  heart  had  said, 
"I  will  not  pray."  I  was  unprepared  for  any  such  exjDerience, 
so  far  as  my  own  volition  was  concerned ;  but  undoubtedly 
there  was  some  cause  operating  which  was  in  consonance 
with  the  laws  of  the  mind ;  and  when  the  morning  came, 
with  its  proi^itious  conjunction  of  circumstances,  these  re- 
sults took  place.  "We  do  not  understand  the  reason  of  these 
hours ;  and  when  they  come  without  volition  or  preparation 


76  Visions. 

on  our  part,  they  seem  more  like  a  sheet  let  down  from  heav- 
en than  like  natural  phenomena.  I  like  to  think  that  they 
are  divine  inspirations.  My  reason  tells  me  that  they  are 
not,  but  I  like  to  think  that  they  are.  Such  poetic  illusions 
help  to  make  truth  higher  and  better. 

These  days  of  spiritual  vision  are  so  many  days  taken  out 
of  the  calendar.  They  are  intercalated  upon  our  dark  and 
frigid  days.  They  come  in  the  midst  of  great  sorrows,  often 
— sorrows  which  stimulate  rather  than  torpify  the  mind. 
There  are  some  troubles  that  beat  us  down,  and  there  are 
some  troubles  that  afford  a  stimulus  to  the  whole  mind,  and 
lift  it  up  to  a  higher  plane. 

Have  you  not,  in  the  great  hours  of  sorrow — not  in  the  de- 
spairing hours  of  sorrow  ;  not  in  the  degrading  hours  of  sor- 
row ;  not  in  the  sordid  hours  in  which  sorrow  drags  you  in 
its  own  slime ;  but  in  those  hours  in  which  you  feel  that  you 
are  a  son  of  God  under  affliction,  that  this  world  is  not  your 
abiding-place,  and  that  your  home  is  the  eternity  of  God — 
have  you  never,  in  those  hours,  felt  that  the  world  to  come 
was  opened  as  it  had  never  been  before,  and  that  God's 
glory  shone  as  it  had  never  shone  before  ?  Have  you  never, 
in  those  hours,  felt  that  those  doubts  and  skepticisms  which 
had  pestered  your  mind  had  been  swejDt  away  ? 

In  the  sultry  insect-breeding  days  of  summer,  how  insects 
abound !  Every  tree  is  a  harbor  for  stinging  pests.  Wher- 
ever you  sit,  they  swarm  around  and  annoy  you,  and  destroy 
your  peace  and  comfort.  By-and-by  there  come  those  vast 
floods  of  clouds  that  bring  tornadoes,  and  that  are  thunder- 
voiced;  and  up  through  the  valleys,  and  over  the  hills  and 
mountains,  sweep  drenching  and  cleansing  rains.  And  when 
the  storm  has  ceased,  and  the  clouds  are  gone,  and  you  sit 
under  the  dripping  tree,  not  a  fly,  not  a  gnat,  not  a  pestilent 
insect  is  to  be  seen.  The  winds  and  rains  have  driven  them 
all  away. 

Has  it  never  been  so  with  those  ten  thousand  little  pests 
of  pride,  and  vanity,  and  envying,  and  jealousy,  and  unlawful 


Visions.  77 

desire,  that  for  days  have  teased  and  fretted  you,  and  kept 
you  busy  with  conscience,  and  taste,  and  affection,  and  all  the 
higher  faculties,  until  God  sent  upon  you  some  great  search- 
ing sorrow,  some  overwhelming  trouble?  There  was  that 
babe,  that  lived  in  your  heart ;  and  God  laid  heart  and  babe 
together  in  the  grave  !  He  subverted  your  household.  He 
brought  on  you  such  torrents  of  suffering  that  it  seemed  as 
though  the  foundations  of  the  great  deep  were  broken  up. 
And  in  those  hours  he  graciously  sustained  you,  and  lifted 
you  up  toward  himself,  so  that,  although  you  suffered  unut- 
terable affliction,  you  felt  that  it  had  cleansed  you  from  jeal- 
ousies, envies,  vanity,  pride,  the  whole  swarm  of  venomous 
and  stinging  insects  that  had  beset  you.  It  is  a  blessed 
thing  to  have  such  hours  of  vision,  and  such  fruits  of  them. 

Oh !  what  inexj^ressible  longings  do  some  bad  men  have 
for  things  that  are  high,  and  noble,  and  true  !  Men  that  are 
addicted  to  wicked  courses  sometimes  mourn  more  than  oth- 
ers can  conceive.  And  when,  in  times  of  sickness  or  deep 
distress,  there  come  to  wrong-doers  these  better  hours,  they 
are  filled  with  sorrow  for  the  past  and  aspirations  for  the  fu- 
ture, and  they  pray  that  the  vision  may  abide.  Yea,  like  the 
disciples  on  the  top  of  the  mountain,  they  say, "  Let  us  make 
three  tabernacles  here,  where  we  may  always  see  Christ  glo- 
rified, and  not  be  obliged  to  follow  him  as  a  man  of  sorrows." 
But  it  can  not  be ;  and,  since  it  can  not  be,  blessed  be  these 
special  hours  of  vision. 

They  come  to  us,  also,  in  times  of  superlative  joy ;  not  such 
joy  as  simply  gratifies,  and,  as  it  were,  saturates.  Some  joys 
are  like  sugar  where  there  is  just  enough  to  flavor  that  into 
which  you  put  it  without  revealing  itself;  and  some  joys  are 
like  sugar  where  there  is  so  much  that  the  flavor  of  the  dish  is 
lost,  and  only  the  sweet  is  tasted.  Now  these  joys  that  sim- 
ply gratify,  these  joys  that  satiirate,  are  sickening  and  are 
bad.  They  draw  us  down.  But  joys  that  raise  the  flavor 
of  every  thing  into  which  they  go  make  you  clearer-thought- 
ed,  and  refine  your  intellectual  perceptions,  your  imagina- 


78  Visions. 

tions,  your  tastes,  your  fancies,  and  your  longings.  These 
are  the  right  kind  of  joys.  Such  joys  bring  visions  frequent- 
ly— not  always,  but  frequently ;  and  some  bring  them  more 
frequently  than  others. 

Then,  too,  that  state  of  mind  into  which  we  come  when  we 
are  powerfully  under  the  influence  of  other  minds  is  frequent- 
ly a  state  in  which  visions  come  to  us  as  from  above.  Often, 
when  a  truth  has  been  presented  to  you  by  the  voice  of  the 
preacher ;  when  another,  by  the  action  of  his  mind  on  your 
mind,  has  kindled  you  into  sympathy  with  him,  God  takes 
occasion  to  bring  before  you  a  vision  of  the  great  realm  of 
the  invisible. 

I  need  not  mention  any  more  of  the  occasions  of  visions. 
You  see  how  various  they  are.  Whatever  tends  to  stimu- 
late the  moral  nature,  and  bring  men  into  higher  conditions 
than  belong  to  their  ordinary  experience,  is  a  preparation  for 
this  power  of  seeing  invisible  things  as  really  and  clearly  as 
if  they  were  visible — this  power  of  taking  hold  of  higher 
truths  with  as  firm  a  grasp  as  that  with  which  we  take  hold 
of  truths  that  represent  themselves  to  the  senses. 

Wliat,  then,  are  the  uses  of  these  hours  of  vision  ? 

First,  they  are  courts  in  which  to  adjudicate  doubtful 
questions,  and  sophistries,  and  falsenesses.  A  man's  mind 
is  a  court,  and  his  passions  are  all  of  them  tricky  lawyers. 
In  ordinary  times,  you  can  not  go  into  any  court,  and  hear 
the  ex  parte  statements  of  the  counsel,  without  feeling  that 
there  is  a  great  deal  of  ingenuity  exerted  to  cover  up  some 
things,  and  unduly  magnify  others,  so  as  to  make  out  the 
best  possible  case  for  the  side  whose  interests  it  is  the  de- 
sire of  the  special  pleaders  to  advance.  But  there  sits  the 
judge,  and  he  puts  the  lawyer  right  on  this  side,  and  he  puts 
the  lawyer  right  on  that  side,  and  holds  every  thing  to  the 
law  and  to  the  fact,  that  he  may  secure  justice. 

Now  we  have  a  judge  in  us.  There  are  many  men  whose 
conscience  has  been  bribed ;  and  when  they  are  in  court  they 
are  all  the  while  excusino:  themselves  for  giving  their  adher- 


Visions.  79 

ence  to  things  that  are  wrong.  They  say, "  I  know  that  such 
and  such  a  thing  'is  true,  but — "  Ah !  when  a  man  says 
"  I  know  that  that  is  true,  but — "  his  conscience  is  bribed. 
"When  a  man  says  "I  know  that  that  is  right,  but — "  the  old 
chief  justice  in  his  soul  has  a  bribe.  The  passions  and  the 
api^etites  have  the  ear  of  the  judge.  Pride,  and  selfishness, 
and  envy,  and  lust  have  bribed  the  judge. 

And  how  is  it  with  you?  Is  there  a  day  in  which  the 
chief  justice  in  your  soul  is  not  bribed  to  sit  and  hear  the 
pleadings  of  the  lower  faculties,  and  to  pronounce  decisions 
at  variance  with  justice  ?  On  the  whole,  is  it  not  the  case 
that  more  often  than  otherwise  he  issues  a  verdict  in  favor 
of  the  wrong,  and  that  you  go  out  of  court  exultant  because 
you  have  triumphed  over  the  right?  You  have  departed 
from  the  standard  of  rectitude,  you  are  guilty  of  some  mis- 
demeanor, and  you  are  arraigned  before  the  judge  that  sits 
in  every  man  to  pass  upon  his  conduct;  but  the  judge  is 
drugged,  the  whole  court  is  drunk,  and  you  are  allowed  to 
go  without  punishment  or  rebuke.  This  happens  not  once, 
nor  twice,  nor  thrice,  but  scores  of  times  in  the  experience 
of  men.  We  need  to  have  courts  where  righteous  judg- 
ments are  declared.  Men  need  such  visions  of  God  Al- 
mighty's judgment-day  that  they  shall  hold  their  breath, 
that  their  conscience  shall  not  dare  to  accept  a  bribe,  and 
that  they  shall  look  at  every  thing  in  the  light  of  God's  law. 

There  are  men  who,  when  these  occasional  hours  of  vision 
come  to  them,  tremblingly  say,  "All  my  life  is  a  lie;"  and 
they  try  to  banish  it  from  sight.  Ah !  what  power  there  is  in 
such  hours  as  these,  when  they  penetrate  the  soul,  and  compel 
the  judge  that  sits  there  to  adjudicate  justly  on  questions  of 
right  and  wrong,  make  him  drop  his  accursed  gains  by  which 
he  has  been  bribed,  and  cause  him  to  say,  "  Pride  is  wicked ; 
envy  is  wicked;  lust  is  wicked;  dishonesty  is  wicked;  thou 
oughtest  to  do  the  things  that  are  right,  and  nobly  right." 
Do  not  such  hours  do  you  good  ?  If  they  do  not,  woe  be  to 
you !     A  man  that,  having  gone  through  such  hours,  does 


80  Visions. 

not  make  a  profitable  use  of  them,  is  a  reprobate.  He  is  sold 
under  sin,  he  is  bound  over  as  a  galley-slave  to  sin,  and  is  on 
his  way  to  the  righteous  retribution  of  God,  treasuring  up 
wrath  against  the  day  of  wrath  ! 

I  beseech  of  you,  do  not  dare  to  sully  these  hours.  Do  not 
tread  them  under  foot,  and  denounce  them  as  outbursts  of 
the  imagination.  "Will  you  not  let  God  help  you  by  means 
of  the  imagination?  Will  you  not  let  God  send  you  any 
thing  that  in  his  wisdom  he  sees  fit,  to  help  you  in  this  strug- 
gle against  the  world,  the  flesh,  and  the  devil  ? 

These  are  hours,  too,  in  which  to  fashion  the  general  drift 
of  plans  and  course  of  life.  In  early  days  in  Indiana,  where 
I  once  lived,  the  forests  were  so  thick  that  a  man  might 
travel  days  and  never  see  the  sun.  An  old  neighbor  of  mine 
told  me  that,  when  he  first  settled  in  Indianapolis,  he  used  to 
go  to  the  White  River,  where  the  trees  were  j^arted,  to  get  a 
sight  of  the  sky.  There  are  dense  forests  there  still;  and 
travelers  in  the  thickly-wooded  sections  often  go  to  the  near- 
est broken  and  hilly  region — some  Alleghanian  height — and 
look  for  a  spot  whei-e  the  lightning  or  tornadoes  have  played 
axeman  with  the  trees,  and  oj^ened  a  window  through  which 
they  can  look  out  upon  the  surrounding  country,  and  ascer- 
tain where  they  are,  and  whether  they  are  going  in  the  right 
direction. 

Now  God  raises  up  before  us  mountain-tops  lifted  high 
into  the  air  above  all  obstructions,  from  which  we  may  ob- 
tain a  view  round  the  whole  horizon.  And  these  are  the 
times  in  which  you  should  lay  the  course  on  which  you  mean 
to  travel. 

These  hours  of  vision  also  prepare  us  to  return  to  life  with 
reductions  or  magnifications  of  our  estimates  of  joy  and  sor- 
row, good  and  evil.  We  are  all  the  time  acting  under  the 
influence  of  false  estimates  in  the  processes  of  life.  We  esti- 
mate some  things  a  great  deal  too  highly,  and  put  altogether 
too  low  an  estimate  on  other  things. 

Men  that  live  by  weighing  small  quantities  of  articles  of 


Visions.  81 

diet  need  to  have  their  weights  and  measures  occasionally 
tested.  The  dust  gets  on  the  scales  which  the  grocer  uses 
for  weighing  out  his  pounds  and  ounces,  and  affects  them,  so 
that,  although  he  is  honest,  the  weight  is  short;  and  the 
weights  lose  something  and  get  light  by  usage ;  and  it  is 
very  necessary,  in  doing  business,  that  you  should  keep  your 
weights  and  scales  right ;  and  it  is  worth  your  while  occa- 
sionally to  have  a  ganger  come  in  and  test  them,  and  see 
that  they  are  right. 

If  it  is  so  with  sugar,  and  tea,  and  coffee,  how  much  more 
is  it  so  with  the  treasures  of  eternity  that  you  are  weighing 
out !  You  need  to  have  your  moral  judgments  corrected, 
so  that  whatever  you  bring  to  their  test  you  may  be  sure  is 
right.  These  hours  of  vision  are  instruments  for  this  very 
purjDose.  They  rectify  our  intensifications  on  the  one  side, 
and  our  undervaluings  on  the  other  side.  They  bring  down, 
or  carry  up,  as  the  case  requires. 

I  never  shall  forget  the  half  day  that  I  spent  on  Gorner 
Grat,  in  Switzerland.  I  was  just  emerging  from  that  many- 
formed  crystal  country  (for  Switzerland  is  one  vast  multiform 
crystal),  and,  coming  up  through  the  valley  of  the  Rhone,  and 
threading  my  way  along  the  valley  of  the  Visp,  I  arrived  in 
the  evening  at  Zermatt,  in  a  perfect  intoxication  of  delight. 
I  lay  that  night  and  dreamed  of  the  morning  till  it  broke 
on  me,  when  we  directed  our  footsteps  up  the  mountain; 
and  after  climbing  two  or  three  hours,  we  reached  the  top 
of  Gorner  Grat.  It  is  a  barren  rock,  with  snow  only  here 
and  there  in  the  cracks  and  crevices ;  but  oh  !  what  a  vision 
opened  upon  me  as  I  cast  my  eyes  around  the  horizon! 
There  stood  some  fifteen  of  Europe's  grandest  mountains. 
There  were  Monte  Rosa,  Lyskam,  Breithom,  Steinbach,  Wies- 
horn,  Mishabel,  and,  most  wonderful  of  all,  Matterhom,  that 
lifts  itself  up  thirteen  thousand  feet  and  more,  and  is  a  square- 
cut  granite  rock,  standing  like  a  vast  tower  in  the  air,  and 
all  of  it  apjDarently,  from  basis  to  summit,  rising  right  up  be- 
fore you.  And  there  was  Gorner  Glacier,  a  great  river  of 
II.— F 


82  Visions. 

ice,  always  moving,  but  never  seeming  to  move.  Down  from 
the  sides  of  these  mountains  flowed  ten  distinct  glaciers  be- 
side. I  swept  the  horizon,  and  saw  at  one  glance  these  glo- 
rious elevations,  on  whose  tops  the  sun  kindled  all  the  melo- 
dies and  harmonies  of  light.  I  was  alone.  I  disdained  com- 
pany. I  was  a  son  of  God,  and  I  felt  eternity,  and  God,  and 
glory.  And  life ! — its  murmur  was  like  the  murmur  of  the 
ocean  when  you  hear  the  beating  of  the  surf  against  the 
shore  twenty  miles  away.  Life ! — it  was  like  the  faintest 
memory  of  a  fading  dream.  And  the  influences  that  had 
subdued  me  or  warped  me — in  that  royal  hour  of  coronation 
I  lifted  them  up,  and  asked,  in  the  light  of  the  other  sphere, 
What  are  ambition,  and  vanity,  and  selfishness,  and  all  other 
worldly  passions  ?  Looking  down  from  that  altitude,  I  gain- 
ed anew  a  right  measure  of  life.  I  never  have  forgotten  it, 
and  I  never  shall  forget  it  till  that  vision  lapses  into  the 
eternal  one  !  Thus,  too,  one  may  stand  on  a  mount  of  vis- 
ion, quite  apart  from  life  and  its  seductive  influences,  and 
there  fashion  again  and  readjust  all  his  moral  measurements. 

My  dear  Christian  brethren,  if  any  of  you  have  been  accus- 
tomed to  look  upon  these  hours  as  mere  visionary  hours,  in 
the  bad  sense  of  visionary^  I  beseech  you  to  review  your 
judgment.  How  many  of  them  have  you  lost !  Remember 
that  these  hours,  although  they  are  not  meant  to  be  abso- 
lute hours  of  revelation,  are  hours  of  exaltation,  in  which  you 
have  clearer  faculties,  a  higher  range  of  thought  and  feeling, 
and  a  better  capacity  for  moral  judgment.  You  have  ecsta- 
sies of  joy  then  that  perhaps  you  never  have  at  any  other 
time. 

Do  not  neglect  these  hours.  They  are  hours  in  which  the 
gates  of  the  celestial  city  are  opened  to  you ;  they  are  houi-s 
in  which  the  guiding  stars  of  heaven  shine  out  for  you ! 

Once  when  I  crossed  the  sea,  for  four  or  five  days  we  were 
unable  to  get  a  glimpse  of  the  stars,  and  were  without  an 
observation.  We  were  running  straight  for  the  Newfound- 
land Banks,  and  were  extremely  anxious  to  learn  our  where- 


Visions.  83 

aboiits.  One  evening  just  enough  of  the  clouds  lifted  to 
show  through  the  rift  a  few  stars.  Our  captain,  who  seemed 
to  be  on  the  alert,  was  instantly  on  the  spot  to  take  his  ob- 
servation ;  and  he  had  hardly  time  to  take  it  before  the  clouds 
shut.  But  he  had  got  it,  and  the  star  could  not  get  it  back. 
It  was  enough  !  That  glimpse  of  heaven  told  him  where  he 
was  on  the  earth  !  The  cloud  shut  down  again,  but  it  could 
not  rub  out  his  calculations. 

There  is  many  a  time,  while  making  your  voyage  on  the 
ocean  of  life,  that  a  star  shines  out.  It  is  visible  only  a  mo- 
ment ;  but  if  you  make  haste  you  can  catch  an  observation, 
and  then  you  will  know  just  where  you  are,  and  you  can  sail 
on  with  trust  in  God,  and  with  the  guidance  of  that  silent 
monitor  that  jioints  the  invisible  way. 

Then  take  these  hours  of  vision,  thank  God  for  them,  and 
use  them. 


PRAYER. 

Be  pleased,  Almighty  God,  to  give  us  this  day  thy  spirit- 
ual insight  and  thy  divine  illumination,  by  Avhich  we  shall 
see  beyond  the  visible,  and  realize  the  things  that  are  not  yet, 
but  are  to  be.  For  thou  hast  revealed  to  us  the  coming  future ; 
and  though  eye  hath  not  seen,  and  ear  hath  not  heard,  the 
things  that  shall  there  be  revealed  to  thy  people  by  the  Sj)ir- 
it,  it  may  be  known  to  us  as  it  was  to  thy  servants  the  proph- 
ets and  the  apostles  of  old.  Out  of  all  the  struggles  of  hu- 
man life,  our  souls  find  rest  in  the  faith  that  there  is  a  land 
of  peace.  In  the  midst  of  things  so  unlovely,  we  rejoice  to 
believe  that  there  is  a  realm  where  love  reigns  supreme.  In 
the  midst  of  all  suffering  of  body  and  of  mind,  cares,  and 
anxieties,  and  fears,  and  remorse,  and  anguishful  affections,  we 
rejoice  to  believe  that  there  is  a  land  where  the  heart  shall  be 
attuned,  and  shall  never  fall  into  discord,  nor  be  rent  with  it ; 
where  there  shall  be  harmony;  and  where  the  music  of  glad- 
ness shall  sound  on  forever  and  forever.  We  rejoice,  though 
we  do  not  know  the  way,  that  Christ  is  the  way,  and  that 
if  we  know  him  and  love  him,  he  will  carry  us  so  that  no 
one  of  us  shall  be  lost  in  the  trackless  path  thitherward.  So 
they  that  have  gone  out  have  had  pilotage.     Our  dear  chil- 


84  Visions. 

dren  are  not  wandering  and  forlorn,  but  have  quickly  reached 
their  home.  Our  beloved  ones  that  have  gone  have  found  their 
way.  The  poor,  the  suffering,  the  oppressed,  the  benighted, 
the  longing  and  yearning  souls  out  of  every  clime,  and  all  that 
have  known  heart-desires,  but  that  did  not  know  what  all  their 
heart-throes  meant — we  rejoice  that  they  have  been  guided, 
and  have  found  that  rest  which  remaineth  for  the  people  of 
God.  Thy  way  of  working  is  wonderful  beyond  our  finding 
out.  And  there  thou  hast  swept  the  vast  circle  which  is  for- 
ever filling,  and  which  never  is  to  be  full ;  and  within  it  thou 
art  making  manifest  the  glory  and  the  beauty  of  holiness. 
Thou  dwellest  there  in  everlasting  blessedness,  not  in  leisure, 
but  ceaselessly  active  in  thought,  and  feeling,  and  endeavor. 
There  thou  dost  put  forth  thine  administration  of  love.  There 
thou  makest  all  that  draw  near  to  thee  blessed  in  thy  smile. 
Thou  that  art  afiable  and  condescending ;  thou  that  art  the 
chief  among  ten  thousand,  and  altogether  lovely — where  thou 
art  is  heaven.  Thou  gatherest  around  thyself  blessed  com- 
panions who  are  pure,  and  noble,  and  great,  and  good,  and 
happy,  and  who,  by  all  the  power  of  their  greatness  and 
their  goodness,  are  communicating  hapjiiness  to  us.  And 
thither  we  travel.  We  seek  that  land.  Though  we  are  full 
of  mistakes,  and  full  of  sins  that  are  worse  than  mistakes,  and 
in  the  midst  of  cares  and  troubles  that  make  the  heart  sick 
at  times,  yet  we  do  not  forget  the  blessed  haven  toward 
which  we  are  moving.  And  as  they  that  are  stormed  upon 
the  sea,  and  through  weary  weeks  are  buffeted  and  driven 
away  from  the  desired  port,  yet  hold  on  with  perseverance, 
and  see  by  faith  in  the  darkness  the  promised  harbor,  so  do 
we,  sailing  through  stormy  seas,  and  beaten  about  by  divers 
winds,  hold  on,  seeing  by  faith  the  promised  land.  Nor  will 
we  grow  weary  or  give  up.  Blessed  be  thy  name  for  all 
the  provisions  of  thy  grace,  for  the  teachings  of  thy  Word, 
and  for  the  sacred  intimations  of  thy  Spirit ! 

And  now,  O  Lord  our  God,  we  pray  that  we  may  be  worthy 
of  this  high  calling,  since  thou  hast  been  pleased  to  lend  thy 
name  to  us ;  since  thou  hast  vouchsafed  to  call  us  thine,  wilt 
thou  lead  us.  O  grant  that  we  may  prove  ourselves  worthy 
to  be  the  sons  of  God.  May  we  be  without  rebuke  in  the 
midst  of  this  perverse  and  crooked  generation,  among  whom 
we  are  to  shine  as  lights.  Grant  that  we  may  know  how  to 
put  on  the  garments  of  salvation,  and  to  make  praise  comely. 
Grant  that  we  may  know  how  to  adorn  our  profession,  that 
men,  looking  upon  us,  may  be  won  by  the  beauty  of  a  true 
Christian  life.     Grant,  we  pray  thee,  that  we  may  rear  our 


Visions.  85 

children  to  love  things  that  are  right,  and  true,  and  simple ; 
and  may  religion  come  to  them  as  the  thing  most  to  be  de- 
sired.    Grant  that  we  may  be  made  wise  unto  salvation. 

Bless  the  members  of  this  Church  and  this  congregation. 
We  thank  thee  for  the  history  of  the  years  that  are  past. 
How  great  has  been  thy  mercy  to  us !  Our  souls  know  it 
right  well ;  and  we  mention  it  together  in  the  courts  of  the 
Lord ;  and  in  the  great  congregation  we  return  our  thanks 
to  thee.  May  that  peace,  and  that  concord,  and  that  affec- 
tion, and  that  united  labor  of  love,  that  has  characterized 
the  past,  go  forward  with  us  into  the  future.  May  many, 
by  the  truth  as  preached  here,  be  brought  to  a  knowledge  of 
themselves,  and  to  a  knowledge  of  Christ  Jesus.  May  many 
be  persuaded  to  turn  from  sin  to  righteousness ;  from  selfish- 
ness to  true  benevolence.  Let  this  Church  shine  in  the  midst 
of  darkness  an  unending  light.  May  it  go  down  from  gener- 
ation to  generation.  "When  we  are  gone,  and  those  that 
know  these  places  shall  know  them  no  more  forever,  may 
more  worthy  successors  be  raised  np  to  carry  the  name  of 
Jesus  down  from  year  to  year  through  ages.  And  grant 
that  revivals  of  religion  and  reformations  of  morals  may  pre- 
vail here. 

Grant  that  this  city  in  which  we  dwell,  signally  blessed  by 
many  divine  favors,  may  be  stimulated  to  a  true  spirit  of 
charity.  Unite  us.  May  all  causes  of  contentions  and  of- 
fense be  taken  out  of  the  way.  May  our  citizens,  led  and 
prospered  of  God  in  the  things  that  are  noblest  and  best,  be 
endued  with  public  spirit.  Make  them  seek  to  build  up  the 
city  in  elements  of  true  civilization  and  Christian  greatness. 

Bless  our  land.  Thou  art  leading  us  along  the  way  of  hu- 
mility; but  thou  hast  promised  that  those  that  are  humble 
shall  be  exalted.  Let  the  day  of  exaltation  come.  Beat  down 
rebellion,  and  utterly  destroy  it.  And  with  it  destroy  its 
cause — slavery.  And  may  war  cease  when  injustice  ceases. 
May  our  laws  be  purified.  May  our  institutions  be  purged 
and  made  clean.  May  this  nation,  that  has  stood  so  long 
representing  liberty,  no  longer  slander  it  by  bondage.  May 
it  be  itself  free,  and  then  become  the  leader  of  other  nations 
that  would  be  free.  And  bring  that  day  when  all  nations 
shall  be  sanctified  with  a  noble  Christian  and  civil  liberty. 
Hear  us,  we  beseech  of  thee,  in  these  our  petitions,  and  an- 
swer us  throuffh  Christ  our  Redeemer.     Amen. 


IV. 


€^t  Smmittahilitt|  nf  ((^n&, 


Treached  in  Plymouth  Church,  Brooklyn,  Sabbath  morning, 
June  Ml,  1862. 


The  Immutability   of  God. 


"Jesus  Christ  the  same  yesterday,  and  to-day,  and  forever," — Heb.,  xiii.,  8. 

"  Yesterday"  signifies  in  the  Hebrew  usage  all  past  time, 
"  to-day"  present  time,  and  "  forever"  all  time  to  come.  The 
declaration  then  is,  that  Jesus  Christ  is  eternally  the  same, 
so  that  this  attribute,  which  is  ascribed  elsewhere  to  God,  is 
here  ascribed  to  Christ — not  only  eternity,  but  immutability. 

The  immutableness  of  God  is  maintained  both  in  .the  Old 
Testament  and  in.  the  New  in  its  every  inflection  and  with 
great  freq[uency.  God  is  said  to  be  without  variableness  or 
shadow  of  turnmg.  The  heavens  shall  change,  the  world 
shall  be  burned  up,  the  universe  itself  shall  feel  the  force  of 
time,  but  God,  eternal,  shall  never  change. 

This  subject  is  of  chief  moment.  It  takes  hold  of  the  very 
essence  of  our  faith,  and  has  the  most  important  bearing 
upon  our  comfort.  The  question  is  not  without  difficulties. 
We  have  not  grasp  of  mind  enough  to  perceive  perfectly  the 
conditions  in  which  God  exists.  It  is  no  presumjDtion,  there- 
fore, against  religious  teaching  that  in  part  it  is  uncertain, 
provided  we  distinctly  recognize  the  uncertainty.  No  man 
supposes  that  the  imperfection  in  a  telescope  which  limits 
the  range  of  investigation  vitiates  what  we  have  found  out 
respecting  astronomy,  or  that  because  we  can  not  include 
the  whole  sweep  of  the  heavens,  nor  know  all  they  contain, 
that  therefore  what  we  do  know  is  not  to  be  depended  upon 
as  truth.  It  is  true  that  on  every  side  of  investigation  we 
soon  reach  limits,  and  that  when  we  have  done  our  best  our 


90  The  Immutability  of  God. 

knowledge  of  God  is  yet  remote,  imperfect,  fragmentary.  It 
is  sufficient  for  guidance  in  life,  but  it  is  not  sufficient  for  the 
construction  of  any  perfect  system. 

Therefore,  in  speaking  of  this  subject — God's  immutable- 
ness,  God's  unchangeableness — it  is  not  with  the  intention  of 
framing  any  theory,  or  of  presenting  to  you  any  thing  like  a 
perfected  philosophy  of  the  divine  nature.  It  is  rather  to 
prepare  for  certain  practical  uses  than  to  construct  a  harmo- 
nious system  that  I  shall  speak. 

The  unchangeableness  of  God  was  taught  originally  as 
contrasted  with  the  fugacious  and  forever  changing  views 
entertained  when  poets,  and  mythists,  and  theologists  of  an- 
tiquity were  accustomed  to  weave  just  such  fancies  as  they 
pleased,  and  twine  them  about  an  imaginary  God,  changing 
to-day  the  imaginings  of  yesterday,  as  one  twines  every  day 
fresh  flowers  about  some  statue.  Without  revelation,  with- 
out even  the  fixed  data  which  science  affords,  men  formed 
ideal  images  and  called  them  God.  There  was  perpetual 
change.  Nothing  was  established;  nothing  was  veritable 
beyond  dispute.  All  human  conceptions  of  God  were  in  the 
shimmering  light  of  ever-shifting  imaginations.  As  opposq^ 
to  such  a  view  of  God,  a  creature  of  fancy,  that  changed  with 
all  the  moods  of  the  imagination,  God  was  declared  to  be  un- 
changeable. 

His  unchangeableness  was  also  taught  as  opposed  to  any 
change  of  dynasties.  The  gods  of  heathen  nations  made  war 
with  each  other,  maintaining  themselves  by  the  exertion  of 
force  against  other  gods,  so  that  there  were  revulsions  in 
high  and  heavenly  places,  and  reigning  dynasties  wei-e  over- 
thrown. As  opposed  to  such  a  conception  as  this,  the  Bible 
teaches  God  to  be  one,  fx'om  eternity  and  to  eternity,  sover- 
eign and  immutable. 

God's  unchangeableness  was  taught,  also,  as  opposed  to 
the  caprice  of  heathen  divinities.  Heathen  gods  were  but  lit- 
tle better  than  deified  despots,  holding  supremacy  for  the  sake 
of  indulging  in  all  those  lusts  and  appetites  in  which  Orien- 


The  Immutability  of  God.  91 

tal  monarchs  indulged.  The  gods  of  antiquity  were  shame- 
ful, subject  to  fits  of  wrath,  and  to  the  most  fitful  changes  of 
the  most  desperate  feelings.  As  oj^posed  to  one  whose  anger 
was  ever  to  be  feared ;  who  was  to  be  placated  by  blood ; 
whose  caprices  were  such  as  to  keep  the  devotee  in  perpetual 
awe — as  opposed  to  such  a  one,  the  Bible  revealed  Jehovah 
the  unchangeable ;  who,  being  once  known,  was  forever  to 
be  obeyed,  because  his  commands  were  equitable  and  right, 
and  from  whom  such  as  learned  his  will,  and  followed  the 
path  of  obedience,  had  nothing  to  fear,  but  every  thing  to 
hope. 

All  our  ideas  of  God  must  spring  from  something  that  is 
in  our  own  mind.  The  heathen  gods  were  framed  from  the 
suggestions  of  the  appetites,  of  the  passions,  of  the  imagina- 
tion, and  of  the  intellectual  powers,  while  the  Hebrew  Scrip- 
tures, from  the  very  earliest  day,  presented  to  the  world  the 
conception  of  a  God  framed  from  the  inspiration  of  the  high- 
est moral  sentiments.  The  gods  of  all  the  world  beside  were 
but  deified  Passions,  at  the  best  nothing  more  than  gods  of 
ideality  and  the  intellectual  powers,  while  from  the  begin- 
ning the  Jehovah  of  the  Scri^Dtures  has  represented  the  most 
sublime  elements  of  our  being ;  and,  after  a  period  of  thou- 
sands of  years,  there  is  nothing  that  can  be  changed  in,  or 
added  to  the  simple  and  illustrious  description  which  God 
gives  of  himself  in  Exodus : 

"And  the  Lord  descended  in  the  cloud,  and  stood  with 
him  there,  and  proclaimed  the  name  of  the  Lord.  And  the 
Lord  passed  by  before  him,  and  proclaimed,  The  Lord,  the 
Lord  God,  merciful  and  gracious,  long-sufi"ering,  and  abundant 
in  goodness  and  truth.  Keeping  mercy  for  thousands,  forgiv- 
ing miquity,  and  transgression,  and  sin,  and  that  will  by  no 
means  clear  the  guilty ;  yisiting  the  iniquity  of  the  father 
upon  the  children,  and  upon  the  children's  children,  unto  the 
third  and  to  the  fourth  generation." 

"Where  is  there  any  thing  nobler,  even  in  the  New  Testa- 
ment, than  this  presentation  of  God  as  merciful,  gracious,  and 


92  The  Immutability  of  God. 

long-suffering ;  who  is  abundant  in  goodness  and  truth ;  who 
keeps  mercy  for  thousands — that  is,  who  holds  over  mercies 
through  generation  after  generation ;  who  forgives  iniquity, 
transgression,  and  sin,  and  yet  does  not  do  it  at  the  sacrifice 
of  rectitude ;  who,  while  he  is  so  full  of  kindness  and  love, 
yet  so  governs  as  to  punish  in  the  end  persistent  disobedi- 
ence, and  to  punish  it  with  the  same  stately  continuance  with 
which  he  rewai'ds  obedience,  to  the  third  and  to  the  fourth 
generation?  It  is  a  declaration  of  the  same  thing  that  nature 
itself  reveals,  namely,  the  transmission  of  good  qualities  with 
their  benefits,  and  of  bad  qualities  with  their  evils.  We 
need  not  correct,  or  in  any  way  augment,  such  a  descrij^tion. 
After  so  long  a  time,  we  have  no  better  idea  to  present  than 
that  which  was  revealed  to  Moses  in  the  beginning  of  the 
record. 

As  far  as  the  "Word  of  God  passed  into  the  hands  of  men, 
it  became  a  fundamental  part  of  their  idea  of  God  that  he 
was  immutable.  That  being  the  philosoj)hy,  taught  and  re- 
ceived in  all  its  phases,  there  sprang  out  of  it,  in  the  course 
of  time,  troublesome  tendencies,  which  need  to  be  corrected 
on  the  other  side.  The  indiscriminate  teaching  of  this  doc- 
trine of  God's  immutableness  has  led  to  a  notion  of  divine 
quiescence  and  eternal  calm  as  a  part  of  the  nature  of  God, 
and  indispensable  to  right  conceptions  of  him.  It  has  been 
supposed  that  variation  of  feeling  was  inconsistent  with  un- 
changeableness ;  that  God  is  unchangeable  in  the  sense  that 
his  feelings  flow  forever  in  the  same  key;  that  God  would 
be  less  than  perfect  if  he  suffered  himself  to  be  changed  in 
feeling  by  external  influences ;  and  that,  from  considerations 
of  his  own  interior  consciousness,  he  determines  how  much 
and  how  little  he  shall  feel  if  he  ever  changes  the  volume  of 
his  feeling.  Thus  it  has  come  witl»many  to  be  supposed  that 
the  immutableness  of  God  implies  one  kind  of  feeling,  eter- 
nally flowing  in  one  volume,  and  with  an  even  current  to  the 
end. 

This  supposition  has  been  enhanced  by  the  idea  that  God, 


The  Immutability  of  God.  93 

knowing  all  things,  could  not  be  subject  to  those  causes  of 
change  which  act  upon  us.  It  has  been  said  that  we  fluctu- 
ate because  we  are  surprised ;  that  we  are  surpi-ised  because 
we  have  not  power  of  foreseeing  and  knowing  all  things ; 
that  our  emotions  come  and  go  according  to  the  ever-chang- 
ing moods  and  interpretations  of  our  understanding,  which 
understanding,  beginning  with  imperfect  hypotheses,  comes  to 
imperfect  conclusions,  and  puts  us  in  a  condition  of  change- 
ableness ;  and  that  such  can  not  be  the  case  with  God,  who, 
seeing  the  end  from  the  beginning,  never  learns  any  thing. 
It  is  said  that  God's  feeling  can  not  change,  because  he  is  ex- 
empt from  those  illusions,  partial  views,  and  imaginations 
which  in  us  cause  incessant  fluctuation.  Hence  it  has  been 
supposed  that  God  neither  kindles  with  joy  nor  is  saddened 
with  grief;  that  he  is  moved  neither  with  ecstasy  nor  sor- 
row ;  that  in  serenity  and  quiescence  he  holds  himself  aloof 
from  the  fluctuations  of  emotion  and  feeling  for  evermore. 
And  there  are  some  dispositions  to  whom  this  view  of  God 
seems  attractive. 

Now,  in  the  first  place,  this  is  wholly  opposed  to  the  rep- 
resentations both  of  the  Old  and  of  the  New  Testament. 
There  is  the  general  principle  laid  down  that  God  is  im- 
changeable;  but  that  has  respect  to  his  moral  disposition, 
and  to  the  comprehensive  method  by  which  he  administers, 
rather  than  to  the  specific  fiow  of  his  feeling.  There  can  be 
conceived  no  orreater  ransre  of  variation  than  that  which  is 
ascribed  to  the  feelings  of  Jehovah  —  of  gladness  and  sor- 
row ;  of  ecstasy  and  sadness ;  of  aj^j^robation  and  of  wrath. 
He  is  represented  as  experiencing  moral  emotions  in  all  their 
shades  or  degrees  of  intensity.  Let  a  man  read  the  Old  Tes- 
tament and  be  asked,  "  Is  God  a  being  subject  to  rise  and  fall 
of  feeling  ?"  and  he  would  be  surprised  that  such  a  question 
should  be  addressed  to  him.  There  is  no  word  in  the  En- 
glish tongue  that  is  not  employed  to  signify  the  gradations 
of  feeling  imputed  to  God — that  is,  gradations  of  feeling  in 
risht  attributes.     There  is  no  fluctuation  of  feeling  in  God 


94  The  Immutability  of  God. 

as  between  good  and  bad.  He  is  always  good,  always 
high,  always  holy,  always  loving,  always  boundless  in  mercy, 
though  he  is  just  and  severe  in  penalty,  and  not  without  in- 
dignation. But  it  is  taught  throughout  the  Scriptures  that 
God's  feelmgs  are  graded  according  to  the  circumstances 
which  are  brought  before  him  in  the  divine  administration. 

It  is  said  that  this  is  so  only  because,  in  depicting  the  char- 
acter of  God,  human  instruments  of  language  had  to  be  used 
which  do  not  represent  the  reality ;  that  this  rej^resentation 
of  God  comes  from  the  modes  employed,  and  that  he  can  not 
be  supposed  to  have  these  fluctuations  of  feeling  because  men 
have  them  from  whose  experience  our  conception  of  him  must 
needs  be  dra^vn.  In  other  words,  it  is  supj^osed  that,  as  we 
learn  through  the  medium  of  language,  and  as  human  lan- 
guage represents  human  passions  and  feelings,  there  is  always 
an  error  which  springs  from  the  instrument  by  which  the  rev- 
elation is  made.  And  this  involves  the  doctrine  that  it  is  not 
possible  for  God  to  make  a  revelation  in  human  language  to 
us.  If,  when  you  teach  by  human  language,  you  say,  "It 
teaches  something,  but  not  the  real  truth ;"  if  you  say  that 
there  is  that  about  it  which  makes  it  imj^ossible  to  under- 
stand what  it  teaches,  and  that  it  teaches  toward a0thmg,hnt 
does  not  teach  the  thing  itself,  I  rejily  that  if  it  only  teaclies 
toward  God,  it  does  not  teach  him  at  all.  If  human  language 
is  not  true  as  far  as  it  goes,  if  it  is  not  true  in  kind  and  na- 
ture, and  if  there  is  this  vice  in  it,  that  it  represents  a  human 
element  which  is  never  applicable  to  the  divine  mind,  then  it 
can  not  convey  a  revelation  of  God  to  us.  But  even  if  it  be 
said  that  in  some  cases  we  are  to  qualify  these  representa- 
tions ;  if  it  be  said  that  the  language  which  describes  God  is 
borrowed  from  thmgs  human,  as,  for  instance,  where  he  is 
said  to  have  arms,  and  hands,  and  feet,  and  eyes,  and  ears ; 
that  we  are  to  drop  the  idea  of  these  things  as  belonging  to 
him,  or  use  them  only  as  figures;  that  the  names  of  members 
of  the  animal  kingdom  and  the  feathered  tribes  are  applied 
to  God,  he  being  called  a  lion  and  an  eagle  as  much  as  a  man. 


The  Immutability  of  God.  95 

and  that  we  are  not  to  adhere  to  the  literal  meaning  of  the 
words  employed  under  such  circumstances,  but  are  to  under- 
stand by  "  lion"  great  courage  or  power,  and  by  "  eagle"  the 
same  quality ;  and  that,  if  we  depart  from  the  commonly  ac- 
cepted interpretations  of  language  in  respect  to  the  animal 
creations  and  men's  physical  organs,  we  must  do  the  same  in 
respect  to  human  attributes,  then  I  reply  that,  although  it  is 
true  that  many  things  taught  of  God  are  taught  by  language 
that  is  to  be  taken  figuratively,  and  to  be  understood  as  con- 
veying a  moral  idea  rather  than  the  physical  meaning  which, 
if  it  were  literally  interpreted,  would  be  ascribed  to  it,  yet  it 
is  not  possible  that  there  should  have  been  for  four  thousand 
years  a  representation  of  God  through  all  kinds  of  figures, 
and  in  every  conceivable  form  of  language,  agreeing  in  one 
thing,  namely,  that  God  is  subject  to  moods,  to  rise  and  fall 
of  right  feelings,  if  there  had  been  a  latent  error,  and  if  the 
divine  mind  could  not  be  represented  by  human  instruments. 

There  is  nowhere  in  the  New  Testament  any  variation  of 
the  mode  of  representing  God  as  employed  in  the  Old.  In 
the  one,  as  in  the  other,  it  is  taught  that  the  divine  mind  is  a 
mind  that  has  sensibility ;  that  in  its  action  the  law  of  moral 
dynamics  is  recognized,  strong  causes  and  minor  causes  pro- 
ducing corresponding  efiects  on  the  divine  mind,  and  the  re- 
sponse to  causes  in  that  mind,  as  in  human  minds,  varying  in 
degree  and  kind  according  to  the  nature  and  amount  of  the 
moral  pressure  exerted. 

But,  still  farther,  I  remark  that  this  attempt  to  divest  God 
of  mobility  of  mind  and  feeling,  and  to  make  him  impassive 
and  quiescent,  is  contrary  not  only  to  the  Old  Testament  and 
to  the  New,  but  to  every  analogy  of  nature.  In  the  animal 
creation,  fixedness  and  continuity  of  sensation  and  sensibility 
are  in  the  ratio  of  lowness  of  organization.  As  you  go  down 
in  the  scale  of  being,  not  only  are  powers  less  in  number, 
but  their  range  is  more  limited.  On  the  other  hand,  as  you 
ascend  the  scale,  variety  of  emotion  and  of  thought,  suscep- 
tibility to  motive,  a  wider  range,  more  mobility,  are  striking- 


96  The  Immutability  of  God. 

ly  developed.  The  invertebrates — molluscs,  insects,  worms, 
and  such  like — you  will  find  to  be  less  and  less  variable,  if 
you  examine  their  history,  as  you  descend.  They  have  little 
feeling,  they  are  comparatively  unexcitable,  their  sensations 
are  confined  to  a  very  limited  scale.  All  invertebrates,  clear 
down  to  vegetation  and  inorganic  matter,  are  characterized 
by  an  approach  toward  immobility,  by  fixedness,  and  by  a 
narroAV  range  of  life.  As  you  rise,  however,  from  them  to 
the  vertebrates,  you  begin  to  find  a  wider  range.  When  you 
reach  the  dog  and  the  horse,  you  find  the  rude  element  of 
mental  faculty;  when  you  reach  men,  you  find  in  them  a 
multiplicity  of  faculties ;  in  studying  men,  as  you  go  from 
the  bottom  to  the  top,  where  they  are  thoroughly  educated 
and  civilized,  you  find  that  mind-growth  consists,  not  in  an 
increase  of  the  number  of  faculties,  but  in  an  increase  of  the 
mobility  of  the  faculties  already  possessed — in  their  suscep- 
tibility to  receive  impressions ;  and  as  you  give  man  growth, 
you  find  in  him  not  only  a  given  number  of  feelings,  but  the 
power  of  rising  and  falling  in  those  feelings. 

Thus,  if  we  seek  for  an  interpretation  of  the  divine  charac- 
ter in  the  analogies  of  nature,  we  must  not  forget  that  in  na- 
ture perfection  and  the  utmost  sensibility  lie  in  tlie  direction 
of  complexity.  And  if  we  are  searching  for  the  greatest  and 
the  best,  we  should  expect  beforehand  to  find  just  that  which 
the  Old  Testament  long  ago  taught  us,  and  which  the  New 
Testament  corroborated,  namely,  that  God,  the  best  and  the 
greatest,  although  in  moral  dispositions,  in  character,  and  in 
aims  of  government  he  is  immutable,  is  not  immutable  in  this 
sense,  that  there  are  no  shades,  variety,  or  gradations  of  emo- 
tion. 

Such  views  of  God  as  those  which  I  am  combating,  if  es- 
tablished and  received  generally,  would  shut  off  human  feel- 
ings from  him.  A  God  whose  feelings  never  move ;  a  God 
that  never  has  a  new  suggestion  or  a  new  emotion;  a  God 
that  is  in  a  state  of  perpetual  quietude — such- a  God  the  hu- 
man mind  can  not  approach.    It  is  utterly  impossible  to  bring 


The  Immutability  of  God.  97 

the  heart  to  love  an  impassive  God.  No  man  can  creep  up 
on  such  a  smooth  and  glassy  surface,  and  hold  on  to  it,  and 
experience  toward  it  feelings  of  adoration,  and  sympathy, 
and  yearning,  and  love,  and  desire.  A  crystal  set  in  the  cen- 
tre of  the  earth  would  answer  the  purpose  of  a  divinity  as 
well  as  a  God  that  had  no  change  of  thought  or  emotion.  It 
is  impossible  for  men  to  be  drawn  toward  a  being  so  entirely 
different  from  that  which  the  human  soul  was  constituted  to 
cherish  and  to  love. 

It  may  seem  as  though  this  were  a  matter  of  mere  unim- 
portant speculation;  but  it  is  much  more  important  than 
many  imagine.  For  there  are  those  who  teach  that  God  can 
not  suffer,  and  that  suffering  is  incompatible  with  perfection. 
They  hold  to  the  view  that  God  dwells  m  an  eternal  calm  of 
joy  which  makes  it  impossible  for  him  to  suffer.  So  universal 
had  this  idea  become,  that  w^hen  the  doctrine  of  Christ  as  God 
was  believed  and  advocated,  men  said, "  What !  do  you  teach 
that  God  died  ?"  Why,  within  my  remembrance,  the  New 
England  hymn-books  were  changed  to  get  rid  of  the  idea  that 
God  died  in  Christ.  The  incomi^atibility  of  suffering  with 
jDerfection  was  one  of  the  arguments  employed  by  controver- 
sial writers  to  show  the  prej^osterousness  of  the  dogma  that 
God,  in  the  person  of  the  Savior,  suffered  for  the  world.  The 
orthodox  mind  even  began  to  be  pained  at  the  mention  of  such 
a  thing.  It  was  declared  to  be  blasphemous  to  ascribe  suffer- 
ing, and  much  more  blasphemous  to  ascribe  death  to  God. 

To  teach  me  that  God  can  not  suffer  is  to  take  away  from 
my  mind  the  most  fundamental  conception  of  what  it  is  to  be 
God.  I  can  not  conceive  of  a  being  worthy  of  universal 
sympathy,  and  honor,  and  glory,  that  can  not  suffer.  Nor 
does  the  fact  that  God  knows  all  things  and  foresees  all  things 
change  that  indispensable  quality  of  mind  which  makes  it  nec- 
essary that  love  should  fluctuate.  Can  I  look  upon  my  child 
and  see  all  the  things  that  are  befalling  him,  and  not  have  my 
feelings  moved,  though  I  know  that  in  the  end  he  will  over- 
come the  troubles  by  which  he  is  beset  ?    My  sympathy  for 

II.— G 


98  The  Immutability  of  God. 

him  leads  me  to  follow  him  with  my  moods,  and  I  go  up  and 
down  the  ways  through  which  he  is  called  to  pass.  And  is 
it  to  be  taught  that  God,  sitting  in  the  heavens,  and  behold- 
ing the  sufierings  of  the  world,  is  unmoved  ?  To  bear  man- 
kind in  his  bosom ;  to  bow  down  his  majesty  and  become  a 
man,  that  he  might  put  himself  underneath  the  human  race 
and  lift  them  up — is  that  the  conduct  of  a  God  that  does  not 
know  how  to  suffer  ?  Is  there  in  such  conduct  no  token  of 
mutability,  of  everlasting  changeableness  of  feeling — not  in 
kind,  but  in  augmentation,  in  diminution,  in  adaptation? 
And  can  you  conceive  of  a  human  soul  attempting  to  love  a 
being  that  is  so  perfectly  untroubled,  so  entirely  undisturbed, 
that  in  a  period  of  six  thousand  years  there  was  not  a  single 
ripple  on  his  soul  ?  Why,  a  piece  of  feldspar  has  been  as 
constant  as  such  a  God  would  be  !  A  rock-crystal,  shut  up  in 
its  rock-bed,  can  say,  "  I  was  made  so  perfect  that  I  have 
existed  without  one  particle  of  mutation  for  thousands  of 
years."  If  there  is  no  such  change  as  I  speak  of,  one  is  as 
good  as  the  other.  But  if  there  is,  in  the  boundlessness  of 
the  divine  mind,  such  exquisite  susceptibility  that  a  child, 
speaking,  can  produce  an  impression,  in  its  measure,  upon  the 
divine  feeling,  and  that  a  patriarch,  praying,  can  produce 
upon  it,  in  his  measure,  a  mightier  impression ;  that  in  such 
feelings,  joy  and  sorrow,  with  endless  iterations  and  fluctua- 
tions, come  and  go,  keeping  evermore  withm  the  bounds  of 
rectitude,  then  is  not  the  nature  of  God  one  toward  which 
your  soul  should  aspire,  and  one  which  should  draw  out  your 
sympathy  and  command  your  love  ?  It  was  such  suscepti- 
bility that  the  disciples  found  in  the  Savior.  There  were  to 
him  not  only  hours  of  joy  in  which  his  face  shone  so  that  the 
men  who  saw  him  stood  in  awe  of  him,  but  hours  of  sadness  in 
which  he  said,  "  My  soul  is  exceeding  sorrowful."  Between 
the  lowest  depths  of  suffering  and  the  highest  moods  of  en- 
joyment his  feelings  played.  They  ranged  from  the  top  to 
the  bottom  of  the  scale.  And  in  the  Savior  was  given  us  the 
pattern  of  how  it  is  with  God,  the  eternal  Spirit. 


The  Immutability  of  God.  99 

It  is  important  to  show  that  God  is  not  immutable  in  an- 
other sense.  It  is  sometimes  urged  by  disputants  in  this 
matter  that  he  never  changes  his  mind  nor  his  purpose. 
There  has  been  perplexity  on  account  of  the  representations 
of  Scripture  in  reference  to  God's  repenting.  In  one  place 
we  read,  "  The  strength  of  Israel  will  not  repent ;  for  he  is 
not  a  man  that  he  should  repent."  And  yet  in  other  places 
it  is  recorded  that  God  repented  him  that  he  had  made  man, 
and  repented  him  that  he  had  established  kingdoms.  Again 
and  again  you  will  find  in  the  Bible  declarations  of  God's  hav- 
mg  repented.  It  is  supposed  that  he  could  not  repent,  and 
yet  it  is  said  repeatedly  that  he  did  repent.  Repentance  has 
two  meanings.  Its  original  meaning  was  simply  changing 
one's  course^  without  any  intimation  respecting  the  nature  of 
the  change  as  good  or  bad.  But  it  has  come  to  have  a  tech- 
nical meaning,  signifying  change  on  account  of  profound  self- 
consciousness  of  wrong.  We  mean  by  repentance  conviction 
of  having  done  wrong,  and  change  in  consequence  of  that  con- 
viction. 

Now  both  of  these  things  are  true  which  are  declared  of 
God  in  Scripture.  God  never  does  repent  as  man  does, 
who  is  imperfect,  and  who  turns  back  on  his  jjath  because  he 
has  gone  wrong.  God  never  goes  wrong,  and  he  never  has 
occasion  to  repent  in  the  sense  of  changing  from  a  wrong 
to  a  right  course ;  but  he  may  and  does  repent  in  the  origin- 
al sense. 

If  you  are  about  to  punish  a  child  that  has  done  wrong, 
and  he  bursts  into  tears  and  says,  "  I  have  done  wrong :  pun- 
ish me  !  punish  me  !  only  help  me,"  you  relent,  and  your  hand 
goes  down,  and  you  say  to  yourself, "  I  meant  to  punish  him, 
but  this  repentance  disarms  me ;"  and,  turning  to  the  child, 
you  say,  "  Go  free,  and  sin  no  more." 

The  Scriptures  teach  that  God  adapts  his  feelings  to  the 
facts  that  arise  in  the  administration  of  his  moral  govern- 
ment. There  is  a  difference  between  the  Bible  and  the  sys- 
tems that  are  based  upon  nature.     All  theologies  outside  of 


100  The  Immutability  of  God. 

the  Bible  make  God  to  be  a  fate.  Inflexible,  intense,  and  cer- 
tain fate  is  part  and  parcel  of  every  system  that  is  founded 
upon  mere  naturalism.  In  the  Bible,  however,  God  is  repre- 
sented as  turning  with  all  the  facihty  of  change  that  belongs 
to  the  parental  mind.  Prayer,  rej)entance,  and  the  hope  of 
salvation  are  based  upon  the  truth  that  God,  although  im- 
mutable in  some  respects,  is  in  other  respects  subject  to  end- 
less variations  and  flexibilities. 

What,  then,  are  the  respects  in  which  God  is  to  be  sup- 
posed to  be  iramutable  ?  In  the  fii'st  place,  no  change  is  to  be 
imputed  to  him  such  as  comes  to  its  by  reason  of  age  and  the 
wearing  of  the  body.  It  has  been  a  mooted  question  wheth- 
er the  mind  ever  sufiers.  I  have  no  theory  on  the  subject. 
The  materialist  says  that  there  is  no  mind  separated  from 
fibre,  and  the  spiritualist  says  that  mind  can  not  be  identi- 
fied with  matter.  I  do  not  know  which  is  right,  and  I  do 
not  care.  All  I  know  is  that  there  is  such  a  thing  as  mind, 
and  that  it  acts  with  and  through  matter.  Let  me  be  as- 
sured of  the  fact  that,  whether  matter  or  spirit,  it  is  im- 
mortal, and  I  do  not  care  what  the  fundamental  thread  is, 
the  vibrations  of  which  you  call  mind.  All  I  want  to  know 
is  that  it  does  not  perish,  and  that  there  is  immortality.  But, 
though  we  are  immortal,  our  life  begins  with  ignorance  and 
inexperience.  Then  come  the  middle  periods  of  life,  bringing 
experience  and  knowledge.  Then  comes  old  age,  with  suc- 
cessive limitations.  Branch  after  branch  seems  to  be  lopped 
ofi",  till  at  last  the  man  has  parted  from  the  joys  of  the  body, 
from  the  pursuits  of  the  mind,  and  even  from  the  feelings, 
moral  and  social,  that  before  made  him  glorious.  "VYe  see 
him,  and  yet  see  nothing  of  him. 

Antiquity  di'eaded  old  age.  The  saddest  things  in  Gre- 
cian literature  are  those  that  indicate  a  longing  for  perpet- 
ual youth.  It  was  a  blind  groping  after  immortality.  What 
the  ancients  wished  was  that  they  might  never  grow  old. 
Running  all  through  fabulous  history  was  the  idea  that  the 
gods  gave  to  their  favorites  the  j^ower  of  being  immortal. 


The  Immutability  of  God.  101 

But  what  was  that  compared  with  what  Chi-istianity  con- 
ceives to  be  immortality — eternal  youth  in  heaven  ? 

Now  the  imj^uting  to  God  of  weariness,  and  wasting,  and 
age,  such  as  belong  to  us  in  this  sphere,  is  contrary  to  Scri]3t- 
ure  and  contrary  to  fact.  If  God  was  young  when  creation 
began,  he  is  just  as  young  to-day.  The  old  painters  of  the 
Middle  Age  borrowed  their  conceptions  of  God  the  Father 
from  the  representations  of  Jupiter ;  and  Jupiter  was,  for  the 
most  part,  made  to  represent  a  man  in  the  j^rime  of  life, 
strong,  with  a  long  beard,  and  with  flowing  locks.  Then,  as 
the  idea  of  wisdom  was  added  to  that  of  strength,  because 
wisdom  usually  comes  with  age,  Jupiter  was  made  to  grow 
older  and  older,  till  at  last  he  was  as  venerable  in  appearance 
as  Moses ;  and  the  representations  of  Jehovah  in  the  times 
of  Raphael  and  Michael  Angelo,  drawn  from  the  later  repre- 
sentations of  Jupiter,  were  nothing  more  than  representations 
of  a  noble  old  man.  I  never  look  at  them  without  revulsion. 
A  noble  old  man  is  one  of  the  most  glorious  sj^cctacles  in  the 
world ;  but  an  old  man  is  no  representation  of  my  God,  who, 
though  he  has  existed  from  eternity,  has  no  wrinkle ;  no  snow- 
white  locks ;  no  waste  and  wear ;  no  weariness ;  no  infirmity ; 
no  mark  of  age.  God  is  forever  young  and  forever  old.  He 
is  not,  as  men  are,  changed  by  time.  It  is  blessed  to  think 
of  being  eternally  young ;  but  the  thought  that,  while  men 
are  wrinkled,  and  bent,  and  scarred  by  disease,  and  toil,  and 
suffering,  and  are  subject  to  all  manner  of  infirmities,  there 
is  One  that  is  unchanged  by  time,  and  is  forever  in  the  bloom 
of  youth — this  thought  comes  home  with  sweetness  and  com- 
fort to  every  heart. 

Nor  is  there  any  such  change  possible  to  God  as  belongs 
to  men  by  reason  of  their  external  circumstances.  We  are 
what  we  are  very  much  on  account  of  the  things  that  happen 
to  us.  Prosperity  makes  some  men  ripe,  and  rich,  and  good, 
and  it  spoils  some  men.  It  seems  to  be  a  random  servant 
that  unlocks  in  different  houses  diflTerent  doors.  The  golden 
key  of  prosperity  goes  into  one  house,  and  unlocks  the  door 


102  The  Immutability  of  God. 

where  the  passions  are  kept,  and  out  come  selfishness,  and 
pride,  and  vanity,  and  it  locks  another  door  where  generos- 
ity and  humility  sleep.  It  goes  into  another  house,  and  un- 
locks the  door  where  goodness  is,  and  lets  it  come  out,  and 
locks  the  door  where  the  evil  dispositions  are  huddled  to- 
gether. Prosjjerity  does  for  one  man  just  the  opiDosite  of 
what  it  does  for  another.  And  the  same  is  true  of  adversi- 
ty. Some,  with  adversity,  grow  ugly,  and  with  jDrosperity 
grow  genial ;  and  others  are  made  genial  by  adversity  and 
ugly  by  prosperity.  In  other  words,  men  are  subject  to  mu- 
tations caused  by  the  working  on  them  of  external  inflvi- 
ences.  But  God  is  mightier  than  any  external  influences, 
because  he  is  the  cause  of  all  external  influences. 

Nor  is  there  any  change  in  the  great  moral  attributes 
which  form  the  basis  of  the  divine  character — justice,  and 
truth,  and  love.  That  which  was  love  in  the  beginning  is 
love  now,  and  will  be  love  for  evermore.  Truth  and  jus- 
tice are  the  same  now  that  they  were  in  the  beginning,  and 
that  they  ever  will  be.  The  applications  of  them  vary,  but 
the  essential  moral  qualities  themselves  never  change.  God 
is  immutable  in  the  fundamental  elements  of  his  being. 

Nor  is  there  any  change  in  the  essential  purposes  of  God's 
moral  government.  It  is  not  to  be  supposed  that  he  came  to 
the  head  of  the  afiairs  of  the  universe  without  a  plan.  It  is 
not  to  be  sujoposed  that  he  made  one  thing,  and  then  de- 
termined what  next  he  would  make.  It  is  to  be  suj^posed 
(and  nature  as  Avell  as  Scripture  bears  witness  to  it)  that  God 
saw  the  end  from  the  beginning,  that  he  follows  a  plan  eter- 
nally ordained,  and  that  the  whole  vast  administration  of 
creation  is  carried  on  in  pursuance  of  certain  great  fixed 
ideas. 

In  view  of  these  statements,  I  remark,  first,  that  it  is  such 
a  view  of  God  as  this  that  inspires  confidence  and  trust  in 
him.  It  is  such  a  view  of  God  as  this  that  gives  a  man  fix- 
edness in  his  own  mind.  The  stronger  we  are,  the  weaker 
we  feel.     That  is,  the  power  to  be  strong  is  the  power  to  ajD- 


The  Immutability  of  God.  103 

predate  the  absence  of  strength.  And  every  heart  has  times 
when  it  longs  for  something  that  is  mightier  than  itself,  and 
something  that  does  not  change.  With  change  in  us  and  all 
about  us,  we  have  nothing  to  lean  on  unless  we  have  One 
Supreme,  who  controls  heaven  and  earth,  and  all  laws,  spii'- 
itual  and  physical,  and  that  is  always  true  to  his  own  na- 
ture, to  his  own  attributes,  and  to  his  revealed  Word.  We 
want  to  feel  that  though  there  are  endless  variations  in  good- 
ness and  justice,  and  endless  degrees  of  these  things  in  the 
divine  mind,  yet  there  is  nothing  there  that  traverses  justice 
or  good,  or  that  changes  these  qualities,  making  that  which 
is  evil  and  unjust  in  this  age  just  and  good  in  the  next  age. 

It  has  been  supposed  that  the  doctrine  of  God's  decrees 
would  repel  men,  and  drive  them  into  infidelity.  On  the  con- 
trary, it  draws  men.  God's  decrees  may  be  taught  so  as  to 
make  men  feel  that  they  are  oppressive ;  but  the  thought  that 
the  decrees  of  God  run  through  time  and  eternity,  and  that 
lie  is  true  to  them,  so  far  from  being  repulsive,  is  exceedingly 
attractive.  You  might  as  well  say  that  the  laws  of  nature 
are  repulsive  as  to  say  that  God's  decrees  are  so.  It  is  con- 
stancy that  is  the  foundation  of  hojDe,  and  civilization,  and 
every  thing  that  is  blessed  in  the  world.  Men  are  glad  that 
light  is  always  light,  that  electricity  is  always  electricity,  that 
all  forces  of  nature  are  always  true  to  their  laws.  Men  are 
thankful  that  the  stars  revolve  perpetually  in  their  ajipoint- 
ed  courses.  Men  rejoice  in  the  fact  that  there  is  fixity  in  all 
those  methods  by  which  the  material  universe  is  conti'olled. 
And  tlie  immutableness  of  God  in  the  great  elements  of  his 
character — truth,  justice,  goodness,  and  love — is  subject-mat- 
ter for  profound  gratulation. 

It  is  such  a  view  as  this  that  gives  us  confidence  in  times 
of  trouble  and  confusion.  Men  are  very  egotistical.  They 
learn  almost  inevitably  to  feel  that  they  are  more  important 
than  all  else,  and  that  other  things  are  important  in  the  pro- 
portion in  which  they  are  related  to  them.  This  nation  is  in 
the  midst  of  fraternal  war  and  civil  confusions.     The  govern- 


104  The  Immutability  of  God. 

ment  is  threatened  with  destruction,  the  customs  of  society 
are  disturbed.  On  every  hand  men  are  saying,  "  Who  shall 
deliver  us  out  of  all  this  turmoil  ?"  They  shut  their  eyes  on 
the  future  and  say,  "  It  looks  dark  and  terrible." 

"What  do  you  know  about  to-morrow  ?  I  know  that  the 
Lord  God  sits  on  the  circle  of  the  earth.  I  know  that  the 
hearts  of  men  are  in  his  hand,  and  that  he  turns  them  as  riv- 
ers of  water  are  turned.  I  know  that  he  is  not  frightened  by 
the  breaking  out  of  these  revulsions.  He  has  had  them  on 
his  hands  ever  since  he  has  had  the  world  on  his  hands. 
Truth  will  triumph.  Justice  is  slow,  but  will  surely  con- 
quer. Good  is  born  with  labor-pains.  Evil  seems  stronger 
than  virtue.    But,  in  the  long  course,  right  is  sure  to  prevail. 

When  a  young  mother  has  her  first  babe,  if  it  whimpers 
and  cries  she  thinks  that  pains  and  diseases  are  about  to 
seize  it.  But  the  grandmother,  that  has  had  the  care  of 
her  own  children,  and  her  children's  children,  is  not  troubled 
when  she  hears  a  child  cry.  Now  God  is  the  everlasting 
Father  of  nations.  For  over  six  thousand  years  he  has  been 
educating  them  toward  manhood.  There  is  no  possible  fan- 
tasy, or  error,  or  deceit  that  is  not  perfectly  familiar  to  him. 
There  is  not  a  road  of  prosperity  or  of  adversity  that  he 
does  not  know.  There  is  not  a  path  that  nations  have  ever 
trod,  or  that  they  will  ever  tread,  with  which  he  is  not  ac- 
quainted. And,  you  that  are  distressed,  where  is  your  God  ? 
Are  you  men  that  have  faith  in  God  when  the  sun  shines, 
and  that  have  no  faith  in  him  when  it  is  cloudy  ?  Are  you 
men  that  have  arms  when  there  is  no  enemy  at  hand,  but 
that  throw  them  away  when  the  enemy  comes?  God  is  a 
God  for  times  of  war,  as  well  as  a  God  for  times  of  peace. 

I  believe  the  purposes  of  God  respecting  this  nation  are 
undisturbed.  They  flow  on,  and  will  flow  on,  in  spite  of  any 
power  that  can  rise  against  them.  They  that  destroy  the 
poor,  saying,  "  How  doth  God  know  ?"  God  holds  them  in 
derision,  and  will  bring  them  to  naught.  My  mind  in  refer- 
ence to  the  future  is  in  undisturbed  repose.     What  it  shall 


The  Immutability  of  God.  105 

be  I  know  not ;  but  this  is  my  confidence :  God  planted  this 
nation,  he  has  nourished  it  thus  far,  he  has  a  great  purpose 
to  fulfill  by  it,  and  he  will  make  it  illustrious  in  the  end. 
The  same  God  that  took  care  of  the  children  of  Israel  when 
flying  from  their  oppressors ;  the  same  God  that  walked  with 
them  in  the  desert  forty  years ;  the  same  God  that  led  them 
to  the  promised  land ;  the  same  God  that  was  in  Jerusalem 
when  Christ  walked  its  streets,  and  that  in  the  darkness  of 
crucifixion  yet  saw  light,  even  when  his  thorn-crowned  Son 
saw  none ;  the  God  of  those  that  in  every  age  have  sealed 
their  faith  with  blood ;  the  God  of  Luther  and  Cromwell ; 
our  father's  God;  the  God  of  all  the  earth — does  he  not  see? 
and  will  he  not  do  right  ?  And  are  there,  in  heaven,  in  hell, 
or  on  earth,  any  that  are  cunning  enough  to  outwit  him? 
He  has  appointed  the  road,  and  we  shall  walk  on  it  and  tri- 
umph, not  because  we  are  strong,  but  because  the  Lord  God 
Almighty  will  not  change,  and  will  accomplish  the  thing 
whereunto  he  hath  set  his  hand.     Trust  in  God  ! 


PRAYER. 

Thou  hast  tauglit  us,  O  Lord  our  God,  to  draw  near  to 
thee  with  prayer  and  supplication.  Thou  hast  taught  us  by 
thy  word,  but  yet  more  tenderly  and  effectually  by  our  experi- 
ence. The  memory  of  thy  goodness,  the  hours  of  communion, 
the  answers  of  prayer,  our  sorrows  checked  or  comforted  oft- 
en, mercies  abundant  beyond  all  that  we  asked  or  thought — 
these  experiences  draw  us  again  and  again.  We  do  not  come 
to  a  desert  land.  Our  faces  are  toward  the  garden  of  the 
Lord,  full  of  all  sweet  and  pleasant  things.  We  sit  down 
beneath  its  arbors.  There  we  find  thee.  And  no  longer, 
walking  in  the  cool  of  the  day,  do  we  seem  naked,  or  do  Ave 
feel  afraid,  and  seek  to  hide  ourselves  from  God ;  but  now, 
knowing  that  we  are  naked  and  open  before  him  with  whom 
we  have  to  do,  we  come  boldly  that  we  may  obtain  mercy, 
and  gi-ace  to  helji  in  time  of  need.  We  rejoice  in  that  afflu- 
ent mercy,  we  rejoice  in  that  grace  that  knows  how  to  ac- 
cept those  who  are  weak  and  sinful,  and  how  to  redeem 
them  out  of  their  transgression,  and  to  bless  them,  notwith- 


106  The  Immutability  of  God. 

standing  their  iniquity.  The  multitude  of  thy  mercies,  the 
wonder  and  the  glory  of  thy  grace,  fill  our  souls  with  rejoi- 
cing and  with  a  humble  confidence.  For  it  is  not  of  ourselves 
that  we  shall  be  saved.  All  the  good  that  is  in  us  is  but  as 
a  germ.  The  evil  things  that  we  do  are  innumerable ;  and 
whether  they  be  sins  or  imperfections,  they  are  alike  the 
causes  of  perpetual  stumbling  and  downfall.  And  there  is 
nothing  in  ourselves  that  we  can  look  upon  with  complacen- 
cy, nor  is  there  any  thing  that  we  do  in  our  best  moments 
that  we  can  look  upon  with  favor  excej^t  in  the  light  of  thy 
grace.  We  are  to  thee  as  our  children  are  to  us.  It  is  our 
love  that  makes  their  homely  words  and  imperfect  deeds  at- 
tractive. We  rejoice  that  we  have  a  God  to  whom  we  can 
come  with  our  inexperience,  and  want,  and  ignorance,  and 
weakness,  and  find  sympathy,  and  forgiveness,  and  succor. 
We  rejoice  that  thou  wilt  strengthen,  as  thou  hast  in  days 
past,  all  those  that  lean  upon  thy  rod  and  thy  staff.  Grant 
that  we  may  not  be  tempted  with  a  guilty  presumption  to 
make  use  of  thy  mercy,  that  we  may  the  easier  and  the  lon- 
ger sin  unchecked  and  unfearing.  Grant  that  we  may  have 
more  of  that  salutary  and  reverential  fear  which  love  in- 
spires, that  it  may  grieve  us  to  grieve  thee ;  that  it  may 
punish  us  to  know  that  we  are  turning  from  thee ;  and  that 
it  may  make  us  more  and  more  earnest  in  doing  things  that 
are  pleasing  in  thy  sight.  Wilt  thou  look  upon  this  congre- 
gration  according  to  the  heart  of  every  one  in  it.  Thou 
knowest  the  history  of  each.  Our  thoughts  and  feelings  are 
plain  before  thee  long  before  we  ourselves  discern  them.  The 
intents  of  the  heart  are  known  to  thee.  Search  every  heart. 
Administer  to  every  one.  Bless  with  the  smiles  of  thy  fa- 
vor those  that  seem  desolate  and  alone.  Give  to  them  the 
sense  of  a  God  near  at  hand.  Upon  those  who  are  sitting  sol- 
itary may  a  great  light  arise.  May  those  that  are  in  dark- 
ness be  illumined.  May  there  come  songs  in  the  night  to 
those  who  hitherto  have  had  but  tears  and  sighs.  We  pray 
that  the  light  of  the  goodness  of  God  in  Christ  Jesus  may 
spring  up  in  every  dwelling  and  in  every  heart.  Strength- 
en every  one  to  bear  the  burdens  incident  to  his  life,  the 
temptations  that  belong  specially  to  him,  and  the  trials 
that  belong  to  his  welfare.  O  God,  thou  canst  do  what  no 
man  can  do  !  Thou  art  not  weary  of  the  greatness  of  thy 
work,  nor  does  it  trouble  thee  to  distribute  thy  thought 
and  thy  care  to  infinite  numbers.  Thou  that  teachest  the 
rains  to  spread  over  continents  ;  thou  that  givest  the  winds 
command  that  they  fan  the  earth — thou  canst  think  of  all  as 


The  Immutability  of  God.  107 

if  each  were  but  one  in  thy  thought  and  regard.  We  be- 
seech of  thee,  turn  to  each  one  of  us  this  morning,  and  give 
to  each  specially  that  which  he  needs.  Grant  forgiveness, 
encouragement,  inspiration,  faith,  and  love ;  and  may  we  all 
feel  that  we  are  clothed  to-day  in  the  garments  of  the  sanct- 
uary, O  Lord,  we  pray  that  thou  wilt  bless  us  in  our 
homes;  and  grant  that  the  affliction  that  thou  art  laying 
upon  us  may  be  blessed  of  God  to  our  spiritual  good.  May 
we  not  murmur  nor  repine.  May  we  not  discriminate  be- 
tween our  experience  and  that  of  others,  and  ask  God  why 
we  are  punished,  and  they  are  spared  from  the  burdens 
which  are  put  upon  vis.  Grant  that  we  may  defer  all  un- 
known and  strange  things  to  that  bright  hour  when  we  shall 
know  as  we  are  known,  and  thou  shalt  interpret  to  us  the 
wisdom  of  thine  economy  toward  us  in  this  mortal  state. 
Little  by  little  we  find  out,  even  on  earth,  the  folly  of  our 
former  murmurings ;  and  grant  that  we  may  be  made  wise, 
and  that  we  may  feel  that  it  is  the  Lord  that  deals  with  us, 
who  can  not  but  do  right ;  that  Lord  who  stretched  out  his 
hands  in  death,  and  that  can  not  but  stretch  them  forth  with 
power  to  save  those  for  whom  he  died  ! 

Grant  that  all  the  events  that  are  transpiring  in  our  time 
and  nation  may  be  for  the  furtherance  of  thy  honor  and 
glory.  Teach  the  people  what  is  the  iniquity  of  that  injus- 
tice of  which  we  have  been  so  heedless  in  days  that  are  past. 
We  have  gone  on  to  purchase  peace  with  money,  and  now 
that  disgraceful  peace  brings  torment.  We  have  run  eagerly 
to  idolatry  in  this  nation,  though  better  taught  by  the  fathers 
— though  instructed  by  a  free  Gospel.  We  have  permitted 
this  nation  to  be  built  up  of  wood,  and  hay,  and  stubble,  and 
the  day  of  fire  has  come ;  and  if  we  are  saved  it  must  be  so 
as  by  fire,  consuming  all  the  base  material  with  which  we 
have  built.  Grant  that  the  lesson  which  this  great  peo23le 
shall  learn  may  be  a  lesson  of  justice  and  righteousness. 
May  those  that  stand  afar  off,  scoffing  and  deriding  moral 
principle ;  may  those  that  weave  webs  and  meshes  by  which 
to  entangle  men's  thoughts,  and  to  build  up  this  nation 
afresh  upon  pride,  and  selfishness,  and  avai'ice,  and  lust,  and 
passion,  find  that  wind  from  out  of  thy  sanctuary  that  shall 
whirl  away  their  devices  as  the  chaff  is  swejDt  from  the  sum- 
mer threshing-floor.  May  that  trial  through  which  we  are 
passing  humble  us  for  our  sins,  and  make  us  feel  our  pride, 
and  vanity,  and  avarice,  and  the  mhumanity  which  has  gone 
with  them,  and  the  guilt  of  our  want  of  sympathy  with  Christ 
in  his  poor  and  despised  ones.    May  there  be  a  Christian  heart 


108  The  Immutability  of  God. 

given  to  this  j^eople,  that  they  may  rise  up  and  ask  what  God 
Avould  have  them  to  do  ;  and  may  they  then  seek  the  estab- 
lishment upon  firm  foundations  of  a  concord  in  the  future  of 
those  great  elements  of  justice,  and  liberty,  and  truth,  and 
purity,  which  shall  stand,  though  the  earth  be  shaken  to  its 
foundation.  More  and  more,  as  the  years  roll  on,  we  see  the 
wrecks  of  nations  whose  sins  have  desolated  them.  May  Ave 
learn  the  better  lesson  of  building  in  righteousness,  and  in- 
suring with  the  God  that  rules  in  the  heavens. 

Wilt  thou  hear  us  in  these  petitions,  not  alone  for  the 
sake  of  ourselves,  of  our  families,  and  of  this  land,  but  for 
the  sake  of  the  whole  human  family.  We  believe,  O  God, 
that  thou  art  the  universal  father ;  and  w^e  pray  for  all  that 
are  thine,  though  they  may  be  ignorant  and  erring,  and 
though  they  may  have  wandered  from  their  Father's  house. 
We  beseech  of  thee  that  thou  wait  watch  over  the  ignorant, 
and  the  poor,  and  the  outcast,  every  where.  And  may  those 
nations  that  are  preparing,  treading  steadily  and  wearily 
their  way  through  difficulty  toward  liberty,  become  more 
and  more  potent  in  body  not  only,  but  in  soul.  May  men 
learn  the  secret  of  liberty.  May  they  understand  that  it  is 
the  soul  that  can  not  be  enslaved ;  that  it  is  only  the  body 
that  can ;  and  may  they  therefore  be  lifted  out  of  animal- 
ism more  and  more  into  intelligence,  into  pure  affections, 
and  into  the  higher  moral  sentiments,  that  thus  they  may- 
come  through  the  liberty  that  Christ  gives  into  that  glori- 
ous liberty  w^hich  is  being  outwardly  developed  among  na- 
tions. And  may  the  whole  world  be  speedily  gathered  in, 
Jew  and  Gentile,  and  all  the  earth  see  thy  salvation.  We 
ask  it  for  Christ's  sake.     Amen. 


V. 


€\it  ^nUxnnahn  nf  Cljriiit. 


Preached  in  Plymouth  Church,  Brooklyn^  in  the  Fall  of  1861. 


TnE  Intercession  of  Christ. 


" 'Wlierefore  he  is  able  to  save  them  to  the  uttermost  that  come  unto  God  by 
him,  seeing  he  ever  liveth  to  make  intercession  for  them. " — Heb.,  ^ii.,  25. 

The  Savior  is  held  up  to  the  hope  and  confidence  of  men 
because  he  is  immortal  —  ever-living  —  never  growing  old, 
like  the  priest;  and  because  he  is  an  intercessor.  It  is  of 
this  intercessorshiij  of  Christ  that  I  wish  to  speak,  and  in  the 
same  spirit  in  which  it  is  here  introduced ;  not  as  a  fertile 
theme  for  ingenious  speculation,  but  as  a  ground  for  hope  and 
consolation. 

An  interceding  Savior  is  a  theme  much  used  by  Paul, 
though  not  alone  by  him.  lii  the  ninth  chapter  of  Hebrews 
it  is  brought  out  very  strongly : 

"  For  Christ  is  not  entered  into  the  holy  places  made  with 
hands,  which  are  the  figures  of  the  true ;  but  into  heaven  it- 
self, noxo  to  appear  in  the  presence  of  God  for  us." 

In  the  eighth  chapter  of  Romans,  in  that  triumphant  out- 
burst that  almost  preludes  the  rejoicings  of  heaven,  Paul 
says, 

"  Who  is  he  that  condemneth  ?  It  is  Christ  that  died,  yea 
rather,  that  is  risen  again,  who  is  even  at  the  right  hand  of 
God,  who  also  maketh  intercession  for  us." 

The  same  truth  is  signified  by  the  tenn  Mediator^  though 
perhaps  with  some  shade  of  difierence  in  its  applications, 
but  it  covers  substantially  the  same  ground  that  the  term 
intercessor  does. 

The  benefit  of  the  view  which  you  derive  from  the  inter- 
cessorship  of  Christ  will  depend  largely  upon  your  own  ac- 


112  The  Intercession  of  Christ. 

ceptance  and  interpretation  of  it.  If  you  associate  it  with 
polemical  disjDutes  of  times  past ;  if  you  attach  to  it  preju- 
dices because  it  has  been  held  by  men  with  Avhom,  generally, 
you  do  not  agree ;  or  if  you  have  been  accustomed  to  defend 
it  against  enemies,  surrounding  it  like  a  fort  with  all  means 
of  defense,  until  the  doctrine  suggests  mainly  ideas  of  contro- 
versy, not  consolation,  then  it  can  be  of  little  use  to  you. 

If,  however,  you  have  been  accustomed  to  look  at  the  in- 
tercessorship  of  Christ  from  the  side  of  human  want  and 
weakness,  and  their  relation  to  the  heart  of  God ;  if  in  your 
imagination  there  has  been  kindled  a  glowing  vision  rather 
than  a  positive  philosophic  idea ;  if  you  accept  an  interced- 
ing Christ  as  the  surety  that  there  is  in  heaven  living  pity, 
sympathy,  thought,  superintendence,  divine  providence,  un- 
failing love  and  remembrance — in  short,  grace  to  help  in  time 
of  need,  so  that  you  shall  not  be  left  to  your  own  wisdom  in 
selecting  the  things  most  needed  in  spiritual  development 
(like  a  man  that,  being  sick,  should  be  put  into  an  apothe- 
cary's shop,  and  left  to  pick  out  his  own  medicines),  but  that 
there  is  a  Physician,  a  Mediator,  an  Intercessor,  a  Care-taker, 
who  undertakes  to  do  for  you  all  tlie  things  that  you  need  to 
have  done^  whatever  they  may  be — things  that  you  do  not 
know  enough  to  do  for  yourself,  whether  your  not  knowing 
arises  from  your  sinfulness,  or  from  the  limitation  of  your 
faculties,  or  from  your  imperfect  knowledge ;  and  that  your 
highest  interests  will  be  attended  to,  not  by  your  own  circum- 
scribed empirical  knowledge,  but  by  One  whose  life,  I  had 
almost  said,  is  divinely  j^rofessional  for  that  purpose — then  in 
the  faith  of  such  an  intercessorshij)  of  Christ  you  will  have 
comfort  of  believing,  consolation  in  trouble,  joy  and  peace  for 
the  present  time,  and  hope  for  the  time  to  come. 

It  is  into  this  last  spirit  that  I  shall  endeavor  to  induct 
you.  This  topic,  however,  has  been  so  much  discussed,  and 
there  are  so  many  doubts  in  different  minds  concernmg  it, 
that  perhaps  we  may  profitably  make  some  exclusions  and 
advance  some  suggestions  which  shall  clear  away  difficulties, 


The  Intercession  of  Cheist.  113 

and  form  a  basis  on  which  your  affections  and  your  spiritual 
emotions  may  work. 

In  transferring  to  the  divine  mind,  in  our  conception,  any 
human  relation  or  character,  we  must  carefully  avoid  ascrib- 
ing that  which  is  purely  secular,  and  subject  to  human  or 
material  limitations.  Thus  the  Scriptures  teach  us  that  our 
God  is  Judge ;  and  yet  it  will  not  do  to  take  all  our  experi- 
ence of  judgeship,  and  ascribe  the  whole  to  the  divine  nature. 
The  methods  by  which  men  come  to  a  knowledge  of  facts, 
and  to  a  just  judgment,  arise  in  part  from  the  limitations  of 
the  human  mind ;  and  these  limitations  can  not  be  suj^posed 
to  exist  in  a  Being  whose  mind  transcends  the  bounds  of 
time  and  of  space.  It  is  only  an  ideal  element,  derived  from 
human  life,  that  we  ascribe  to  God.  The  purest  human  love 
is  too  coarse  for  the  Perfect  One.  By  our  imagination  we 
refine  it,  we  lift  it  above  those  impairing  conditions  which 
exist  in  every  human  experience,  and,  rubbing  out  the  nar- 
row lines  of  weakness,  we  behold  it  infinite  and  divine ! 
The  Fatherhood  of  God,  if  taken  in  a  large  way,  not  too  mi- 
nutely and  critically,  embodies  a  transcendent  truth.  And 
yet,  if  you  go  into  an  examination  of  precisely  what  a  father 
is  in  human  experience,  and  transfer  that  bodily  to  the  divine 
mind,  you  will  embarrass  more  than  help. 

Many  stand  in  doubt  on  the  subject  of  the  intercessorship 
of  Christ  because  they  have  attempted  to  aj^ply  to  the  di- 
vine mind  those  features  of  intercessorship  which  are  human 
— the  incidents  of  weakness,  ignorance,  and  of  physical  forms 
and  necessities.  Failing  in  that,  they  have  either  abandoned 
the  subject  in  disappointment,  or,  holding  to  it,  stumbled 
into  errors. 

We  are  not,  therefore,  to  understand  the  intercessorship  of 
Christ  as  implying  any  strangeness,  unacquaintance,  or  indif- 
ference in  the  Eternal  Father  respecting  our  affairs.  If  we 
send  an  embassador  to  England,  it  is  because  we  suppose  that 
the  government  or  people  have  not  knowledge  or  interest 
enough  in  our  affairs  to  act  justly  toward  us,  or  that  they 

IL— H 


U-i  The  Intercession  of  Christ. 

will  lack  motives  for  acting,  or  that  their  motives  for  right 
action  will  need  to  be  intensified.  Hence  in  foreign  courts 
we  have  ministers  to  intercede  for  us.  They  are  mediators ; 
they  are  intercessors.  You  must  drop  all  such  notions  of 
the  intercessorship  of  Christ  as  that  he  is  to  convey  informa- 
tion not  now  possessed,  to  adjust  facts,  or  to  make  things 
clearer  in  the  divine  mind  than  they  were  already,  other- 
wise you  ascribe  to  God  elements  of  intercessorship  which 
are  purely  the  result  of  the  limitations  of  the  human  con- 
dition. 

Still  less  must  we  imagine  any  reluctance,  any  unwilling- 
ness in  the  divine  mind,  whether  from  just  anger  or  from 
reasons  of  state,  which,  though  insuperable  without  persua- 
sion, may  be  pleaded  away.  Many  persons  have  said,  "  We 
can  not  conceive  of  a  God  who,  sitting  in  a  kind  of  preju- 
dice of  anger,  will  not  do  things  that  are  loving  and  benefi- 
cent to  the  human  family  in  its  sin-beset  condition  until  rea- 
soned with.  We  can  conceive  of  a  proud  parent  whose  feel- 
ing has  been  wounded  by  the  misconduct  of  a  child,  who 
needs  persuasion  to  induce  him  to  do  right,  and  to  help  him 
bring  his  own  best  feelings  into  the  judgment  seat,  and  to 
keep  down  his  worst  feelings ;  but  to  suppose  that  the  di- 
vine Father  requires  any  such  intercession  as  this ;  to  imag- 
ine that  there  is  wrath,  burning  hot ;  an  unquenched,  an  un- 
slaked zeal  of  justice  in  his  bosom,  which  will  down  when 
Christ  comes  before  him,  but  on  which  no  effect  is  produced 
when  men,  in  all  the  generations  of  time,  and  in  myriad  num- 
bers, suffering,  weeping,  and  wailing,  lift  themselves  u-p  before 
him,  is  simply  awful !  We  could  not  worship  such  a  God." 
Neither  could  I.  There  is  no  such  God.  Nothing  of  this  is 
taught  in  the  Word  of  God.  To  be  sure,  there  is  an  attemjjt, 
by  figures  and  intensifications,  to  show  that  God,  whether 
men  do  right  or  wrong,  is  a  conservator  of  justice,  but  no- 
where is  there  an  attempt  to  show  that  God  has  such  a  love 
of  abstract  justice  that  he  is  without  sympathy  for  concrete 
life  and  sufiering,  and  that  a  second  person,  a  new  element,  is 


The  Intercession  of  Christ.  115 

needed  to  bring  him,  as  it  were,  to  consent  to  the  exercise  of 
his  attributes  of  kindness  and  mercy. 

The  effect  of  such  a  view  would  be  to  render  the  divine 
nature  less  earnest  and  benevolent  without  Christ  than  with 
him,  whereas  the  Bible  teaches  us  that  God  was  always  in- 
finitely benevolent  and  earnest.  God  so  loved  the  world 
that  he  gave  his  only  begotten  Son  to  die  for  it.  Christ  is 
represented,  not  as  indifferent,  nor  as  sped,  like  a  silver  arrow 
from  a  golden  bow,  without  his  own  volition.  He  is  always 
shown  as  concurrent  and  accordant  with  the  divine  mind. 
The  Bible  is  emjAatic  in  this  —  that  Christ  is  the  gift  of 
God ;  that,  beholding  the  world  in  wickedness  and  sorrow, 
God  was  moved  by  his  characteristic  benevolence  to  the 
work  of  saving  mankind  through  Jesus  Christ ;  and  any  view 
that  contradicts  these  representations  of  Scripture  must  be 
wrong,  and  will  mislead  us  in  forming  our  conceptions  of  the 
nature  of  Deity. 

Nor  are  we  to  suppose  it  necessary  that  there  should  be 
an  intercessor  because  the  whole  work  of  redemption  and 
salvation  was  a  work  that  required  more  aid  than  naturally 
belonged  to  one  mind. 

"While  we  exclude  these  elements  of  weakness  and  limita- 
tion known  to  be  human,  we  must  not,  on  the  other  hand, 
exclude  too  mvich,  nor  assume  an  undue  degree  of  knowledge. 

No  man  is  prepared  to  show  that  the  mind  of  God  is 
not  affected  by  the  intercessions  of  friendship  and  love.  It 
is  true  that  God  is  in  and  of  himself  just  and  good,  and  that 
there  is  no  conflict  between  his  justice  and  benevolence.  It 
is  trvie  that  he  needs  not  to  take  counsel  with  any.  But  we 
are  not  prepared  to  say  that  there  is  not  in  the  divine  dispo- 
sition a  great  pleasure  in  being  pleaded  with  ;  that  God  does 
not  prefer  to  act  in  the  atmosphere  of  personal  sympathy, 
and  in  the  warmth  of  desires  presented  to  him  by  others, 
rather  than  in  the  silence  and  seclusion  of  absolute  supe- 
riority. 

In  forming  a  conception  of  God,  men  have  sometimes  lifted 


116  The  Intercession"  of  Christ. 

him  above  all  human  sympathies  into  the  heavenly  spheres  ; 
and  then  they  raise  him  above  the  help  of  heavenly  intelli- 
gence, and  at  last  remove  him  so  far  that  only  the  most  lithe 
and  nimble  imaginations  can  reach  him  at  all;  and  then, 
when  they  have  put  him  above  all  men,  and  angels,  and 
thrones,  and  dominions,  they  think  they  have  a  true  concep- 
tion of  God.  They  think  that  to  be  divine,  requires  one  to 
be  lifted  out  of  and  above  all  sympathy  with  created  things. 
It  is  natural,  but  it  shows  how  unskillful  we  are  in  fashion- 
ing our  ideas  of  the  Head  of  the  Universe;  for,  if  there  is  one 
thing  more  resplendent  than  another,  it  is  God  Immanuel. 
And  what  is  God  Immanuel  but  this:  God  with  us — God 
brought  down  to  our  sympathy  and  fellowship  ? 

When  men  worshiped  leeks  and  onions,  and  monkeys,  and 
sticks,  and  stones,  it  was  necessary  to  carry  up  the  concep- 
tion of  the  divine  nature  away  from  these  lower  images  and 
representations.  AIL  men  must  form  their  ideal  of  God  out 
of  something  that  is  in  themselves,  and  the  heathen  natural- 
ly form  theirs  out  of  their  own  lower  passions  and  bodily  ap- 
petites and  desires.  The  Greeks  formed  theirs  largely  from 
their  sesthetical  feelings.  Our  Christian  method  of  forming 
an  ideal  of  God  is  to  conceive  of  the  divine  nature  through 
the  light  of  our  highest  and  most  purified  affections,  and  of 
our  noblest  moral  sentiments. 

In  the  earlier  periods  of  human  thought  it  was  needful  to 
carry  men  away  from  gross  images ;  and  you  will  find  all 
through  the  Old  Testament  representations  of  God  as  sitting 
among  the  stars;  as  lifted  above  the  fens  and  miasma  of 
this  lower  earth ;  as  higher  than  kings  and  princes ;  as  hav- 
ing no  need  of  counselors ;  as  being  instructed  by  none.  "  I 
am  that  I  am,"  said  he,  in  the  majesty  of  solitude.  It  is  de- 
clared, "  The  Lord,  he  is  God ;  there  is  none  else."  These 
declarations  were  true  in  the  relations  in  which  they  were 
then  applied.  The  design  was  to  teach  that  God  is  not  ca- 
pable of  being  represented  by  any  material  thing ;  that  the 
divine  Spirit  vastly  transcends  all  our  ordinary  and  earth- 


The  Intercession  of  Christ.  117 

ly  images ;  that  God  can  not  Ibe  represented  from  the  out- 
side world,  nor  from  the  lower  elements  of  human  nature. 
That  work  is  done.  We  need  no  longer  to  secure  to  men 
the  idea  of  greatness — superiority — transcendent  elevation. 
We  are  even  in  some  danger  of  carrying  this  view  to  an 
extreme. 

The  Old  Testament  having,  in  accordance  with  an  existing 
want,  revealed  God  as  above  the  low  conceptions  of  men  with 
regard  to  his  character,  and  represented  him  as  distinct  from 
their  idols,  and  as  grander  than  any  material  image,  the  New 
Testament,  in  response  to  a  need  in  the  opposite  direction, 
has  brought  the  divine  mind  back  from  its  lofty  height  into 
human  sympathies  and  feelings,  saying,  "  Immanuel !  Im- 
manuel !" —  God  with  us.  It  teaches,  to  be  sure,  that  God  is 
infinite,  eternal,  glorious  in  holiness,  and  fearful  in  praises; 
but  it  also  teaches  that  he  descends  to  the  lowest;  that  he 
is  interested  in  the  least  things ;  that  from  his  eyes  nothing 
is  hid ;  that  he  has  a  father's  compassion,  and  bears  our  sins, 
and  carries  our  very  sorrows.  Under  the  teachings  of  the 
Old  Testament,  there  was  danger  that  God  would  be  con- 
ceived of  as  inaccessible  and  unsympathetic ;  therefore  the 
New  Testament  shows  us  that  the  true  nature  of  God  is  to 
be  great,  but  tender ;  to  be  vast  and  powerful,  but  to  use 
his  vastness  and  power  with  love  and  gentleness.  I  do  not 
mean  that  the  spirit  of  the  New  Testament  is  not  found  in 
the  Old,  and  of  the  Old  in  the  New.  The  fatherhood  of  God 
is  magnificently  presented  in  the  Old,  and  the  kingship  of 
God  sublimely  represented  in  the  New.  No  tenderness  can 
surpass  the  pleading  of  God  with  his  people,  as  represented 
by  the  later  books  of  the  Old  Testament.  Yet  it  can  scarce- 
ly be  denied  that  the  chief  and  characteristic  aim  of  the  pic- 
tures which  the  Old  Testament  affbrds  was  to  pi-esent  God 
as  august,  sublime,  unapproachable — fearful  in  praises  !  that 
of  the  New,  to  present  him  as  rich  in  love,  tender,  sympathet- 
ic, accessible  as  a  Father  to  the  least  and  the  lowest. 

Out  of  this  misconception  of  God  as  unapproachable  in 


118  The  Intercession  of  Christ. 

greatness  grew,  I  think,  the  idea  that  he  was  independent  and 
self-contained  in  such  a  sense  that  it  would  never  make  any 
diiference  with  his  counsels  what  another  thought  or  wished 
— a  false  idea.  For,  on  the  contrary,  there  are  many  analo- 
gies, and  there  is  much  positive  instruction  in  the  Word  ol 
God  to  show  that  the  divine  nature  is  such  that  it  does  make 
a  great  deal  of  difference  what  are  the  thoughts  and  wish- 
es of  those  about  him.  There  is  a  social  element  in  God, 
which,  though  it  does  not  act  as  the  social  element  docs  in 
us,  may  be  somewhat  interpreted  by  our  experience.  How 
is  it  that  the  parent  who  means  to  give  his  child  the  things 
that  it  needs,  finds  it  pleasanter  to  give  them  if  the  child 
comes  and  asks  for  them  with  winning  ways  and  earnest  per- 
suasion, than  if  he  merely  gives  them  from  a  sense  of  what 
is  fit  and  best  ?  There  are  many  thmgs  that  you  Avill  do, 
and  mean  to  do  for  a  friend,  but  if  there  comes  one  that 
loves  both  you  and  that  friend,  and  asks  you  to  do  those 
same  things,  you  are  pleased,  because  it  gives  you  the  oppor- 
tunity, by  a  single  kindness,  to  strike  more  than  one  chord. 
Under  such  circumstances,  we  like  to  do  a  thing  for  one  per- 
son for  the  sake  of  another.  It  is  pleasanter  to  do  things  in 
the  atmosphere  of  persuasion.  Another  man's  mind  has  an 
efiect  on  our  minds  in  things  that  we  mean  to  do  of  ourselves, 
and  are  competent  to  do  without  any  aid  from  others. 

Can  any  interpret  the  doctrine  of  j^rayer,  as  laid  down  in 
the  New  Testament,  on  any  other  ground  than  this  ?  Christ 
taught  that  men  ought  always  to  pray,  and  not  to  faint. 
And  he  said,  "There  was  in  a  city  a  judge  which  feared  not 
God,  neither  regarded  man ;  and  there  was  a  widow  in  that 
city,  and  she  came  unto  him,  saying,  Avenge  me  of  mine  ad- 
versary. And  he  would  not  for  a  while ;  but  afterward  he 
said  within  himself,  Though  I  fear  not  God,  nor  regard  man, 
yet  because  this  widow  troubleth  me  I  will  avenge  her,  lest 
by  her  continual  coming  she  weary  me.  And  the  Lord  said, 
Hear  what  the  unjust  judge  saith.  And  shall  not  God  avenge 
his  own  elect,  which  cry  day  and  night  unto  him,  though  he 


The  Intercession  of  Christ.  119 

bear  long  with  them  ?    I  tell  you  that  he  will  avenge  them 
speedily."* 

What  is  the  argument?  This  was  a  judge  neither  moved 
by  a  sense  of  divine  rectitude  nor  by  a  spirit  of  human  sym- 
pathy, and  it  seemed  as  though  he  was  completely  shut  up 
to  injustice ;  and  yet,  there  was  a  jilace  in  which  the  mind  of 
the  poor  widow  could  reach  his.  She  could  affect  him  by  an 
importunity  which  would  make  his  life  a  burden  to  him  if  he 
did  not  grant  her  request.  The  motive  was  the  lowest  which 
could  enter  mto  even  such  a  bad  mind  as  his,  but  he  was  ac- 
cessible to  that.  His  mind  was  covered  over  at  the  toji,  it 
was  walled  up  at  the  sides,  and  there  was  no  entrance  to  it 
till  you  got  to  the  bottom;  but  even  as  low  as  that  there 
was  a  place  where  she  could  get  at  it.  His  was  the  worst 
kind  of  a  mind ;  the  mind  of  God  is  the  noblest  kind  of  a 
mind ;  and  the  contrast  in  the  parable  is  this :  if,  when  you 
take  the  worst  man  you  can  find,  there  is  a  way  of  getting  at 
his  mind ;  then,  when  you  implore  God,  who  is  the  noblest 
and  best  of  all  beings,  shall  his  mind  not  be  accessible  in 
every  royal  attribute  ?  It  is  accessible  to  his  elect  at  every 
pomt  from  the  top  to  the  bottom.  Though  he  may  tarry 
long ;  though  he  may  take  his  own  infinite  leisure,  he  will 
avenge  them.  God  is  not  a  being  that  draws  himself  apart, 
and  out  of  the  reach  of  persuasion.  He  is  one  that  is  sus- 
ceptible of  being  influenced  by  other  beings.  Any  sound  doc- 
trine of  prayer  necessitates  the  implication  that  the  nature 
of  God's  mind  is  such  that  other  minds  have  power  upon  it — 
not  to  cause  him  to  do  things  that  he  would  not  do  of  his 
own  accord,  but  to  cause  him  to  do  them  with  more  gladness 
than  he  otherwise  would  if  left  to  himself 

Christ's  example  ratified  his  teaching.  He  was  accustom- 
ed to  go  to  God  with  implorations,  and  to  plead  with  him, 
as  if  his  pleading  was  needful  to  the  granting  of  the  things 
which  he  asked.  It  was  not  needful,  perhaps,  to  the  fact  of 
their  being  procured,  though  it  may  have  been  needful  to  the 
*  Luke,  x™i.,  1-8. 


120  The  Intercession  of  Christ. 

pleasure  or  gladness  of  giving,  to  %yhich  the  mind  of  God  was 
susceptible. 

The  popular  idea,  then,  that  God  is  so  self-contained  that 
nothing  which  man  can  do  can  influence  or  afiect  him,  is  false. 
It  is  true  that  he  is  all- wise,  limitless  in  knowledge,  and  all- 
sufficient  ;  but  it  is  also  true  that  he  likes  to  have  the  play  of 
other  minds  upon  his  own  mind ;  that  he  likes  to  have  men 
and  angels  pour  their  thoughts  upon  him. 

Again,  no  man  is  prepared  to  show  that  there  is  not  some 
element  in  the  nature  of  moral  government,  as  related  to  va- 
rious worlds,  that  requires  some  such  mediation  as  that  as- 
serted, but  not  explained,  in  the  language  of  the  New  Testa- 
ment. There  are  intimations  in  the  New  Testament  of  a 
necessity  for  a  mediatorial  work  between  God  and  man. 
Wliether  that  necessity  is  in  the  divine  mind,  whether  it  is 
in  the  human  mind,  or  whether  it  stands  connected  with  the 
general  system  of  moral  government,  I  do  not  know.  I  do  not 
pretend  to  know  where  it  is.  But  this,  it  seems  to  me,  is  de- 
clared in  the  New  Testament :  that  it  was  necessary  that  one 
should  suffer,  and  that  through  suffering  one  should  become 
a  mediator  between  God  and  man. 

The  sufferings  and  death  of  Christ  were  not  incidental. 
They  were  divinely  ordained.  There  was  not  only  a  use  in 
them,  but  a  necessity  for  them.  Not  alone  is  this  declared, 
but  it  is  the  great  undertone  of  the  New  Testament.  The 
fact  that  man's  salvation  is  througli  faith  in  Christ,  and  that 
the  power  of  Christ  to  save  men  is  connected  with,  or  de- 
pendent on,  his  suffering  for  them,  can  not  be  taken  away 
from  the  New  Testament  without  abstracting  its  very  life. 
It  would  be  like  an  organ  without  diapasons.  It  would  have 
no  bass. 

There  have  been  a  great  many  theories  on  this  subject 
from  the  days  of  Origen  to  our  time.  It  was  held  by  some 
in  the  early  Church  that  this  whole  world  had  sold  itself  to 
the  devil,  that  the  devil  owned  mankind,  and  that  God  could 
not  interfere  to  take  them  away  from  the  devil  without  pay- 


The  Intercession  of  Christ.  121 

ing  him  therefor  a  fair  price,  and  that  he  paid  hiin  that  price 
in  the  blood  and  sufferings  of  Christ.  It  was  held  that  there 
was  a  fair  commercial  transaction  between  God  and  the  devil, 
by  which  God  acquired  a  right  to  the  creatures  that  he  had 
formed.  It  did  not  take  long  to  reject  that  theory  with 
horror. 

Then  there  has  been  a  theory  that  it  was  necessary  that 
Christ  should  suffer  in  order  to  fulfill,  by  a  literal  equivalent, 
the  threatenings  of  the  law.  It  has  been  taught  that  Christ 
suffered  in  his  own  self  the  sum  total  of  all  the  anguish  that, 
had  it  not  been  for  the  atonement,  would  have  belonged  to 
all  the  individuals  of  the  human  race,  in  time  and  to  eternity. 
What  a  superabounding  fantasy  !  What  a  nightmare  of  fol- 
ly !  If  there  had  been  but  a  single  generation  of  men,  and  it 
had  been  said  that  they  had  smned,  and  that,  in  order  that 
they  might  be  saved,  all  that  they  would  have  suffered  had 
been  gathered  up  and  experienced  by  one  mind,  we  might 
have  i^aused  with  some  degree  of  respect.  But  that  the  di- 
vine nature  should  go  on  creating  and  reproducing  men,  till 
from  thirty  to  sixty  millions  every  year  are  emptied  into  the 
world,  and  until  the  human  undei'standing  is  entirely  unable 
to  conceive  of  the  infinite  numbers  of  those  that  are  to  suffer, 
and  then  that  it  should  be  said  that  one  mind  has  suffered  all 
that  they  would  have  suffered  in  the  immeasurable  round  of 
eternity,  shocks  those  very  moral  sentiments  which  Christian- 
ity itself  has  most  educated,  and  to  which  it  always  appeals. 

But  what  shall  we  say  when  to  that  is  added  the  stark-mad 
reasoning  that  was  once  promulgated  from  this  desk  by  an- 
other ?  He  said  that  as  man  was  susceptible  of  infinite  in- 
crease in  faculty,  and  went  on  sinning  forever,  so  he  would 
be  punished  forever ;  and  that  his  punishment  would  be  aug- 
mented forever,  "  until,"  said  he,  "  it  is  probable  that  there 
are  single  individuals  in  this  congregation  who  will  suffer 
more  in  the  periods  of  prospective  ages  than  has  been  suffer- 
ed by  all  the  lost  and  damned  in  perdition  since  the  begin- 
ning: of  time!"    And  this  monstrous  conclusion  followed  from 


122  The  Intercession  of  Christ. 

a  delirious  logic  based  ui^on  a  lying  premiss.  I  need  not  say- 
that  this  theory  is  almost  universally  exploded.  Quantita- 
tive suffering  is  hardly  any  more  defended. 

I  do  not  wish  to  be  understood  as  holding  that  Christ  did 
not,  in  an  appropriate  andju&t  se^ise,  bear  the  pimishment  of 
the  sins  of  the  loorld.  What  I  protest  against  is  the  idea  that 
Christ  in  himself  suffered  in  literal  measure  every  pang  that 
would  have  been  suffered  by  the  whole  race  forever  and  for- 
ever, in  the  increasing  ratio  of  their  ill  desert. 

It  has  been  held,  farther  (and  it  is  the  current  theory  of 
what  are  called  the  New-School  theologians,  my  own  breth- 
ren in  the  Congregational  order,  and  men  with  whom  I  most 
sympathize  in  faith),  that  the  sufferings  and  death  of  Christ 
were  necessary  in  order  that  God  might  vindicate  his  justice 
before  the  universe.  I  do  not  say  that  it  is  not  so,  but  only 
"  How  did  you  find  it  out  ?"    It  may,  or  it  may  not  be  true. 

Do  you  ask  me,  then,  on  what  ground  I  put  the  necessity 
for  the  sufferings  of  Christ  ?  This  is  my  whole  faith  on  this 
subject :  The  New  Testament  teaches  that  there  was  a  rea- 
son which  made  it  necessary  that  the  blood  of  one  should  be 
shed  to  atone  for  the  sins  of  men.    The  reason  is  not  explained, 

I  learn  from  the  New  Testament  that  it  was  needful  that 
my  God  in  Jesus  Christ  should  suffer  for  me.  I  accept  the 
Fact  with  reverence  and  gratitude;  but  I  do  not  seek  to 
know  on  this  point  what  the  New  Testament  has  not  explain- 
ed ;  and  the  example  of  those  that  have  attempted  to  explain 
it  has  left  me  with  less  disposition  to  make  the  attempt.  With 
reference  to  the  atonement  of  Christ,  I  hold  that  he  did  make 
a  proper  satisfaction  for  the  sins  of  the  world.  I  do  not  know 
how  it  w\as  that  he  did  it.  He  knows,  and  God  knows.  All  I 
know  is  the  simple  announcement  that  it  was  done  in  such  a 
way  that  God  could  be  just,  and  the  justifier  of  him  that  be- 
lieved. 

But  there  is  a  part  of  the  atoning  work  that  is  made  known 
to  us,  namely,  that  it  manifested  God.  That  is  explained, 
and    o-iowinor    illustrations    of  it   fill   the   New  Testament. 


The  Intercessiox  of  Christ.  123 

There  are  two  elements  to  be  considered  respecting  Christ's 
suiSering.  In  the  first  place,  I  hold  in  a  solemn  faith  the  in- 
explicable fact  that  it  was  necessary,  for  reasons  known  to 
the  divine  Being  (whether  it  inheres  in  his  own  person,  in  his 
creatures,  or  in  his  government,  I  know  not),  that  one  should 
sufier  for  all.  Secondly,  I  hold  that  the  sufi*ering  of  Christ 
manifested  the  mind  of  God  in  such  a  way  as  to  cause  it  to 
appear  sweet,  and  blessed,  and  attractive  for  evermore. 

In  the  remaining  parts  of  this  discourse,  based  on  the  inter- 
cessorship  of  Christ  as  thus  explained,  I  purpose  to  make 
some  suggestions  arising  both  from  our  unconscious  want 
and  from  our  conscious  necessities. 

First,  There  has  been,  from  the  beginning  of  the  world,  a 
steady  evolution  from  the  seminal  point  in  individuals  and 
races.  Childhood  has  developed  into  manhood.  There  has 
been  going  on,  since  the  world  began,  a  continuous  education 
in  physical  skill,  in  intellectual  endowments,  in  moral  energy, 
and  in  {esthetic  qualities.  And  revelation  teaches  us  that  this 
fourfold,  complicated  education  is  going  on,  not  only  for  time, 
but  for  eternity. 

See  how  complex  a  man's  education  is  for  time  alone.  He 
is  being  educated  for  all  the  relations  of  life,  in  the  family,  in 
business,  in  society,  in  public  and  private  affairs.  The  rains, 
the  winds,  the  lightning ;  every  gentle  and  every  rude  influ- 
ence of  Nature ;  the  industries  of  life,  the  civil  structure  of 
society,  laws,  customs,  social  conditions — in  short,  all  things  in 
heaven  and  on  earth,  are  divinely  employed  as  instruments  of 
human  culture.  And  man  begins  his  journey  in  this  world 
stumbling,  and  not  knowing  any  thing  about  what  the  re- 
sult is  to  be,  except  that  there  is  to  be  another  life,  and  that, 
although  he  sustains  special  relationships  here,  he  is  to  live 
forever  and  forever  in  a  sphere  beyond  this.  How  many 
things  are  being  done  for  man  which  transcend  his  own  rec- 
ognition— which  do  not  come  within  the  scope  of  his  judg- 
ment and  choice ! 

My  child's  education  is  in  my  hands.     Looking  at  his  emo- 


12-1  The  Intercession  of  Christ. 

tive  peculiarities,  his  mirthful  tendencies,  and  his  executive 
capacities,  I  say,  "  He  should  be  a  sj)eaker ;"  and,  though  I 
say  nothing  to  him  about  it,  I  educate  him  with  a  \iew  to 
that  end.  I  give  him  culture  that  shall  increase  his  bodily 
strength,  improve  his  voice,  and  quicken  his  imaginative 
powers.  Then  I  give  him  other  kinds  of  training  which 
are  necessary  to  the  accomplishment  of  my  purpose.  And 
so  his  education  goes  on,  and  he  knows  nothing  of  what  I 
am  trying  to  do  till  he  is  twenty-one  or  twenty-two  years 
of  age,  when  he  follows  out  the  plan  that  I  have  laid  down, 
and  educates  himself  still  farther. 

Now  if  there  is  One  that  sits  in  heaven  and  controls  the  el- 
ements of  our  being,  and  holds  in  his  hand  the  threads  of 
our  destiny  for  time  and  eternity,  as  I  hold  in  my  hand  the 
threads  of  my  child's  destiny  so  far  as  his  education  for  the 
pursuits  of  this  world  is  concerned,  what  a  glorious  office- 
work  must  that  be  which  he  is  carrying  on  for  us !  Oh ! 
what  joy  it  brings  to  me  to  think  that  I  am  not  a  lonely 
wanderer  trying  to  find  my  way ;  but  that  the  vague  and  in- 
explicable yearnings  which  I  have,  and  which  I  am  following, 
are  the  drawing-strings  thrown  out  to  lead  me  by  One  who 
knows  just  what  my  necessities  are,  and  who  stands  ready  to 
relieve  them  all ! 

My  comprehensive  idea  of  mediatorshij:)  and  intercessor- 
ship  is  this :  that  there  is  one  who,  before  God,  is  my  king, 
my  priest,  my  jDrophet,  my  all  in  all,  to  do  whatever  I  need 
to  have  done,  in  body  or  soul,  for  time  and  for  eternity.  If 
that  be  the  doctrine  of  Scripture,  blessed  be  God  for  the 
enunciation  of  so  glorious  a  doctrine !  The  Headshij)  of 
Christ — I  i^roclaim  it !  Be  thou.  Lord  Jesus,  my  head,  and 
let  me  follow  thy  beck  ! 

"  But,"  says  a  man,  "  do  not  you  open  the  door  to  bound- 
less latitude  when  you  say  that  you  do  not  get  a  clear  un- 
derstanding of  these  things  ?"  Some  things  men  learn  by 
their  senses,  some  by  reflection ;  some  knowledge  is  born  of 
the  feelings,  or  comes  as  moral  intuitions.     Different  natures 


The  Intercession  of  Christ.  125 

employ  diiFerent  faculties  by  which  to  help  themselves  to 
truth;  some  employ  more  imagination,  and  others,  again, 
emotion  rather  than  imagination.  We  believe  many  things 
which  we  can  not  well  express  in  words,  and  many  things 
which  we  can  not  reduce  to  intellectual  formula.  Some  of  the 
very  life-truths — the  most  constant  and  nourishing  truths — 
without  which  we  should  almost  miss  our  own  identity,  hover 
about  us  as  an  atmosphere,  or  rise  within  as  a  delicate  exhala- 
tion, but  can  not  be  handled,  and  refuse  to  be  condensed  to 
words  and  propositions.  They  are  none  the  less  true.  As  to 
the  reason  of  them,  I  know  about  as  much  as  leaves  know  of 
the  reason  of  their  turning  toward  the  sun.  At  night  they 
are  all  inclined  westward,  toward  the  place  where  they  last 
saw  their  hope  and  joy.  And  when  the  sun  comes  up  above 
the  eastern  horizon,  they  turn  and  lift  their  faces  toward  it 
again.  And  I  know  that  under  certain  circumstances  of 
want  the  soul  spontaneously  lifts  itself  up  to  God.  As  a 
child,  unknowing,  turns  to  the  bosom  that  feeds  it,  so  my 
heart  and  your  heart  cry  out  for  God.  Though  I  have  no 
clear  and  distinct  conception  of  the  way  in  which  his  soul 
acts,  upon  mine,  I  am  conscious  that  I  am  comforted.  If  in 
this  life  we  might  have  no  comfort  except  that  which  comes 
from  things  that  we  understand  perfectly,  we  should  be  of 
all  men  most  miserable. 

In  the  night  a  child  wakes,  and,  discovering  that  it  is 
alone,  cries  out  in  terror,  and  the  parent  goes  to  it  and  lifts 
it  up,  and  brings  it  to  her  own  couch ;  and  it  falls,  dreaming, 
half  crying  and  half  smiling,  into  a  sweet  slumber  by  its 
mother's  side.  We,  at  best,  like  the  child  in  its  mother's 
arms,  are  not  fully  awake.  We  do  not  know  what  influences 
are  acting  on  us,  nor  much  about  him  that  is  working  in  us. 
All  we  know  is  that  without  God  we  die,  and  that  when  we 
lift  ourselves  toward  that  glorious,  and,  in  this  life,  uninter- 
preted and  uninterjDretable  Being,  our  heart  feels  the  divine 
power,  and  rejoices  in  it.  I  do  not  dislike,  in  its  proper  j^lace, 
reason ;  but  reason  shall  not  play  despot  over  the  heart. 


126  The  Intercession  of  Christ. 

There  is  a  special  need,  too,  of  divine  aid  and  instruction  in 
the  moral  nature.  We  have  need  to  be  taught  constantly 
what  is  right,  and  we  have  need  of  increase  of  moral  strength 
to  do  according  to  our  knowledge.  We  need  instruction  in 
reference  to  what  are  called  duties,  and  we  need  help  to  per- 
form that  which  v/e  know  to  be  duty.  In  the  eighth  chapter 
of  Hebrews  reference  is  made  to  this  very  thing. 

"  For  this  is  the  covenant  that  I  will  make  with  the  house 
of  Israel  after  those  days,  saith  the  Lord :  I  will  put  my  laws 
into  their  mind,  and  write  them  in  their  hearts ;  and  I  will  be 
to  them  a  God,  and  they  shall  be  to  me  a  people.  And  they 
shall  not  teach  every  man  his  neighbor,  and  every  man  his 
brother,  saying,  Know  the  Lord ;  for  all  shall  know  me,  from 
the  least  to  the  greatest.  For  I  will  be  merciful  to  their  un- 
righteousness, and  their  sins  and  their  iniquities  will  I  re- 
member no  more." 

We  are  conscious  that  we  are  evolving  in  this  life  an  edu- 
cation having  two  parts — first,  the  augmentation  of  our  posi- 
tive knowledge  of  right  and  wrong ;  and,  secondly,  incarna- 
tion in  our  own  conduct  and  dispositions  of  these  ideas  of 
right  and  wrong.  And,  as  the  top  of  a  mountain  must  al- 
ways be  supplying,  from  the  clouds,  the  springs  that  exude 
from  the  bottom,  so  we  need  perpetually  to  have  our  moral 
conceptions,  and  our  practices  under  them,  inspired  by  con- 
tact and  connection  with  Christ,  who  is  our  intercessor  and 
mediator. 

Secondly^  No  one  is  prepared  to  say  that  there  are  not  spir- 
itual conflicts  between  realms  of  spirits  which  render  it  ab- 
solutely necessary  that  we  should  have  a  superhuman  guide 
and  leader.  We  are  not  the  only  people  that  were  ever  cre- 
ated. The  habit  of  God's  mind  seems  to  be  to  take  a  germ, 
one  root-idea,  and  to  prove  what  infinite  variations  it  is  sus- 
ceptible of.  Take  the  root-idea  of  ferns.  In  all  the  varieties 
of  ferns  there  is  a  substantial  unity,  but  the  ways  in  which 
God  writes  that  idea  are  many.  Take  an  order  of  birds — for 
instance,  the  passeres  —  as  they  are  scattered  all  over  the 


The  Intercession  of  Christ.  127 

globe,  and  bring  them  together,  as  science  is  doing ;  a  com- 
mon type  runs  through  them  all,  but  the  fundamental  idea 
is  expressed  in  multifarious  forms.  The  same  thing  is  true 
of  all  carnivorous  and  herbivorous,  vertebral  and  invertebral 
animals  that  cover  the  globe.  In  the  case  of  no  class  of  them 
has  the  root-idea  stopped  where  it  began.  In  each  case  a 
unitary  thought  has  been  written  out  in  endless  variations. 

As  a  theme  in  music,  consisting  of  a  few  distinct  notes, 
which  are  heard  plainly  at  first,  when  it  is  elaborated  on  the 
organ  is  only  recognized  now  and  then,  sometimes  as  though 
it  were  the  voice  of  a  bird  flying  and  humming  through  the 
air,  sometimes  as  though  it  were  the  sound  of  horns,  some- 
times •as  though  it  were  the  tone  of  a  sweet  flute,  and  some- 
times as  though  it  were  all  of  these  combined,  but  always 
with  variations,  so  you  will  find  that  God,  in  every  depart- 
ment of  his  creation,  though  he  began  with  a  single  thought, 
in  carrying  it  out  evolved  endless  variations. 

The  application  is  this :  When  we  come  to  man,  arovwe  not 
to  suppose  that  the  same  thing  is  true  ?  Is  it  not  reasonable 
to  suppose  that  the  divine  creative  capacity  was  not  exhaust- 
ed in  making  the  numerous  races  of  the  globe  ?  Are  we  to 
suppose  that  what  we  see  in  this  world  is  the  sum  of  the  lit- 
erature which  God  has  produced  from  the  alphabet  in  which 
this  was  written  ?  I  do  not  attempt  to  prove  any  thing  nor 
affirm  any  thing  on  this  point.  No  one  can  speak  with  any 
certainty  concerning  it.  I  present  an  illustration,  and  not 
an  analogy.  In  heaven,  in  the  realms  of  space,  in  the  infinite 
abyss  of  spiritual  existence,  how  many  races  and  kinds  of 
creatures  may  there  not  be  that  have  a  substantial  family 
likeness?  May  we  not  presume  that  we  are  in  a  universe 
filled  with  beings  varied  in  nature  and  disposition  beyond 
any  concej)tions  that  we  can  form?  I  am  not  speaking  of 
the  malign  spirits  such  as  men  invented  in  the  periods  of 
Tuscan  mythology,  nor  of  the  devils  and  fiends  suggested  by 
the  sfrim  and  ascetic  notions  of  the  mediaeval  monks,  nor  of 
the  va2;aries  of  imagination  with  which  we  so  often  meet  in 


128  The  Intercession  of  Christ. 

modern  times ;  but  that  there  is  a  universe  with  intelligences 
far  exceeding  in  variety  those  which  this  world  contains  I 
do  not  think  improbable,  aside  from  the  light  of  revelation. 
And  I  suggest  that  if  this  is  a  fact,  and  man,  in  his  moral  ed- 
ucation, is  being  hurtled  through  the  myriad  kingdoms  and 
emj^ires  of  air,  he  needs  some  one  that  knows  him,  and  them, 
and  all  things,  to  be  perjDetually  on  the  alert  for  him.  Do  you 
say  that  God  takes  care  of  us  ?  Why  not  say  that  Christ 
does,  inasmuch  as  he  is  our  highest  conception  of  God  ?  He 
is  the  Father  incarnated  and  brought  down  to  us ;  and  why 
not  ascribe  the  work  of  watching  over  us  to  him,  of  whom 
we  have  clear  and  definite  conceptions,  that  we  may  have 
more  benefit  from  our  faith  than  we  can  have  if  we  ascribe 
it  to  the  divine  Father? 

I  will  not  pursue  these  suggestions  farther.  Let  me  close 
by  speaking  of  the  use  and  comfort  of  them. 

First,  it  is  a  great  comfort,  or  should  be,  that  the  heavenly 
land  is  not  a  strange  land,  into  Avhich  we  are  to  emigrate, 
neither  knoAvn  nor  knowing.  Having  lived  much  in  the 
"West,  I  have  seen  many  emigrants  arrive  there,  who,  on  ac- 
count of  poverty  or  misfortune,  or  from  the  hope  of  bettering 
their  already  comfortable  circumstances,  were  in  search  of 
homes  in  that  region ;  and  I  have  seen  them  huddled  on  the 
thoroughfares  in  bleak  weather,  strangers  among  strangers, 
and  I  have  thought  that  their  reception  must  have  made 
their  new  home  most  dismal.  If  dying  was  to  be  thrust  out 
of  life,  and  to  emigrate  to  a  land  where  we  have  no  friends, 
w^here  there  are  none  that  know  us,  and  where  we  know  none, 
it  would  be  a  sad  thing  indeed.  But  if  our  names  are  known 
in  heaven ;  if  they  are  written  in  the  Lamb's  book  of  life ; 
and  if  Jesus  Christ  has  ever  been  our  Head,  our  Leader, 
our  Mediator,  administering  in  our  behalf,  and  preparing  a 
place  for  us,  that  where  he  is  there  we  may  be  also,  then 
heaven  will  be  familiar  to  us,  and  dying  will  not  be  so  much 
to  be  deplored.  After  this  life  is  over,  heaven  will  seem  to 
us  like  home.     Already  it  begins  to  draw  us.     Our  losses  fly 


The  Intercession  of  Christ.  129 

up  there  and  become  riches.  If  the  cage-door  lets  out  our 
warbler,  the  woods  get  him,  even  if  we  lose  him.  We  hear 
him  singing  afar,  even  if  he  will  not  return  to  our  hand.  So 
we  give  to  heavenly  fields  what  we  lose  from  earth !  And 
the  belief  that  in  heaven  our  fathers  have  long  dwelt,  that 
we  are  going  there,  and  that  our  names  are  there  known  and 
afiectionately  called,  is  comforting  indeed. 

You  can  not  find  in  the  New  Testament  any  of  those  hate- 
ful representations  of  dying  which  men  have  invented,  by 
which  death  is  portrayed  as  a  ghastly  skeleton  with  a 
scythe,  or  something  equally  revolting.  The  figures  by 
which  death  is  represented  in  the  New  Testament  are  very 
different.  There  are  two  of  them  which  I  think  to  be  exqui- 
sitely beautiful.  One  is  that  oi falling  asleep  in  Jesus.  When 
a  little  child  has  played  all  day  long,  and  become  tired  out, 
and  the  twilight  has  sent  it  in  weariness  to  its  mother's 
knee,  where  it  thinks  it  has  come  for  more  excitement,  then, 
almost  in  the  midst  of  its  frolicking,  and  not  knowing  what 
influence  is  creeping  over  it,  it  falls  back  in  the  mother's 
arms,  and  nestles  close  to  the  SAveetest  and  softest  couch  that 
ever  cheek  pressed,  and,  with  lengthening  breath,  sleeps ;  and 
she  smiles  and  is  glad,  and  sits  humming  unheard  joy  over 
its  head. 

So  we  fall  asleep  in  Jesus.  We  have  played  long  enough 
at  the  games  of  life,  and  at  last  we  feel  the  approach  of 
death.  We  are  tired  out,  and  we  lay  our  head  back  on  the 
bosom  of  Christ  and  quietly  fall  asleep. 

The  second  representation  is  that  death  is  but  a  going 
home.  A  child  is  away  at  school,  and  the  vacation  is  near  at 
hand ;  and  you  may  be  sure  that  the  father  and  mother  long 
to  see  the  child  more  than  the  child  wants  to  see  father  and 
mother.  So,  according  to  the  good  old  custom,  the  father 
takes  the  carriage  and  wends  his  way  to  the  school,  perhaps 
with,  perhaps  without  intimations  to  the  child  of  his  com- 
ing. In  the  midst  of  his  tasks  on  the  last  day,  the  child 
is  suddenly  greeted  by  the  voice  and  j)resence  of  his  father; 

n.— I 


130  The  Intercession  of  Christ. 

and  no  sooner  are  the  first  salutations  exchanged  than  the 
father  says,  "Are  your  things  ready?  we  go  to-morrow." 
Wine  is  not  so  sparkling  as  the  joy  in  the  child's  heart ! 
He  can  neither  eat,  nor  sleep,  nor  play.  The  thought  that 
his  father  has  come,  and  that  he  is  going  home  to  see  his 
mother,  and  brothers,  and  sisters,  has  quite  intoxicated  him. 

By  such  glorious  images  as  this  God  is  pleased  to  repre- 
sent our  departure  from  the  present  life.  The  Lord  Jesus 
Christ  shall  come  to  our  poor  old  weather-stained  school- 
house  in  this  world,  and  say  to  us, "  Come  home !  you  are 
wanted." 

Heaven  is  not,  then,  a  great  bleak  shore  to  which  you  are 
driven  by  the  storm,  and  where  you  are  cast  among  savage 
inhabitants.  Heaven  is  a  blessed  place  of  rest.  It  is  your 
home.  You  have  friends  there,  the  chiefest  among  whom  is 
he  that  loved  you,  that  gave  himself  for  you,  that  has  ever 
watched  over  you  during  your  earthly  pilgrimage,  and  that 
soon,  very  soon,  will  come  for  you,  as  already  he  has  for  yours. 
They  are  glorious  there ;  and  in  all  their  glory,  if  they  could 
but  speak  a  word  to  us,  would  it  be  such  a  poor  stumbling 
word  as  that  which  they  spoke  in  the  hour  of  death  ?  If 
they  could  speak  to  us  from  the  eternal  world,  Avhat  hope  and 
consolation  would  they  give  us ! 

That  is  one  comfort,  then,  of  this  mediatorship  of  Christ. 
He  has  made  heaven  our  home.  It  is  his  house,  and  we  are 
his  children,  and  he  loves  to  bring  us  there,  and  he  will  very 
soon  do  it. 

Next,  we  may  take  comfort  and  consolation  from  Christ's 
intercessorship  in  reference  to  our  earthly  affairs.  I  speak 
that  which  I  do  know,  and  testify  that  which  I  have  felt  and 
understood  in  my  heart.  Indulge  me  a  moment,  brethren, 
for  your  own  profit.  I  am  as  sensitive  to  praise  and  blame, 
to  right  and  wrong,  to  pain  and  pleasure,  it  seems  to  me,  as 
the  mercury  is  to  the  atmosphere ;  and  I  have  been  placed 
for  years  in  a  situation  in  which  almost  every  thing  that 
would  tend  to  excite,  and  annoy,  and  distress  a  person,  has 


The  Intercession  of  Christ.  131 

been  brought  to  bear  upon  me;  and  yet  I  do  not  believe 
there  has  been  a  man  in  your  acquaintance  that  in  the 
main  has  been  more  happy  and  contented  than  I  have  been. 
It  has  not  been  owing  to  my  disposition,  for  that  is  tumultu- 
ous and  changing.  What,  then,  has  been  the  cause  of  it  ?  I 
bear  witness,  to  the  honor  of  God  and  to  your  comfort,  that 
it  has  been  a  constant  faith  that  in  human  affairs  there  is 
the  presence  and  mediation  of  my  Savior  God.  It  has  been 
a  sense  of  Christ  present  in  every  thing,  thinking  for  me, 
feeling  for  me,  and  arranging  for  me.  When  I  have  been 
tossed  about  on  the  sea  of  life  like  a  ship  that,  on  angry 
waves,  is  made  to  careen  till  it  shows  its  very  keel,  the  first 
imjiinging  may  perhaps  have  caused  excitement,  but  the  sec- 
ond thought  has  been, "  It  is  all  right ;  every  thing  is  hap- 
pening right." 

I  look  back  upon  a  life  whose  thwartings  were  my  gains. 
My  best  successes  have  been  disappointments.  I  should 
have  been  damaged,  perhaps  ruined,  had  I  gained  what  I 
vehemently  strove  for.  Sorrows  that  I  shunned  and  joys 
that  I  sought  changed  places,  and  pain  became  pleasure, 
and  grief  gladness !  My  God  has  been  to  me  a  friend — 
more  than  any  human  friend,  and  he  has  done  for  me  exceed- 
ing abundantly  more  than  I  asked  or  thought.  I  can  only 
say  that  it  is  wonderful — the  kindness,  the  gentleness,  the 
wisdom  that  have  been  exercised  toward  me  by  my  Savior 
in  the  administration  of  human  affairs.  And  now,  for  the 
time  to  come,  shall  I  refuse  to  let  him  take  care  of  my  con- 
cerns ?  Shall  I  no  longer  trust  in  him  who  has  so  long  been 
to  me  a  faithful  friend  ?  My  oldest  son  is  in  the  army,  and 
shall  I  read,  with  trembling  anxiety,  the  account  of  every 
battle,  to  see  if  he  is  slain  ?  I  gave  him  to  the  Lord ;  I 
shall  not  take  him  back,  and  I  will  not  worry  and  fret  my- 
self about  him.  I  will  trust  in  God,  though  he  slay  not  only 
him,  but  me  also.  And  my  all  I  have  put  on  the  same 
ground — at  least  I  tried  to ;  sometimes  not  succeeding,  and 
sometimes  succeeding  a  little.     My  God  —  this  Christ  Im- 


132  The  Intercession  of  Christ. 

manuel — God  with  me — has  sustained  and  comforted  me  in 
care  and  trouble,  and  taken  away  my  fear,  and  put  hope  in 
its  place,  and  I  will  look  to  him  still.  If  there  are  any  here 
that  have  carried  burdens,  and  whose  faces  are  wrinkled 
with  care,  I  beseech  you  to  try  living  by  faith  in  a  present 
Savior  that  loves  you,  and  ordains  all  things,  and  says  that 
every  thing  shall  work  for  your  good  if  you  love  God. 

Only  one  word  more.  There  are  two  ways  of  looking  at 
every  trial,  every  lonesomeness,  every  wasting  grief  The 
one  is  the  besotted  way,  the  earthly  way,  in  which  you  weigh 
your  trouble ;  in  which  you  measure  it ;  in  which  you  wear 
it  like  a  girdle ;  in  which  you  let  it  work  upon  your  feelings, 
and  make  you  selfish ;  in  which  you  let  it  unman  you,  and 
cause  you  to  bear  false  witness  against  the  Savior  and  his 
Gospel.  The  other  is  the  Christian  way,  by  which  you  look 
up  the  moment  trouble  comes  upon  you. 

Do  you  say,  "  I  do  not  know  how  to  find  the  way  ?"  He 
came  to  seek  and  save  just  such  as  you.  Do  you  say,  "  I  am 
not  worthy  to  carry  my  afiairs  to  God  ?"  No,  you  are  not ; 
God  would  not  be  the  Being  that  he  is  if  he  were  not  adapted 
to  take  persons  that  are  not  worthy  to  come  to  him.  It  is 
peculiarly  the  glory  of  God  that  he  does  not  choose  compan- 
ions, and  those  that  are  like  himself,  but  that  he  accepts  all 
just  as  they  are. 

Now  if  you  do  not  need  God,  do  not  come  to  him.  But 
if  you  are  in  trouble  of  body  or  soul ;  if  the  things  on  which 
you  have  leaned  have  broken ;  if  you  want  some  one  to  com- 
fort and  sustain  you,  then  come  to  him.  Do  you  find  the 
world  to  be  enough?  Have  your  dreams  been  realized? 
Have  you  accomplished  all  the  things  that  you  meant  to  do, 
so  that  you  can  look  back  upon  your  life  complacently  ?  Or 
do  you  find  marks  of  age  and  signs  of  limitation  in  yourself, 
and  a  sad  undertone  flowing  through  your  mind,  together 
with  influences,  and  yearnings,  and  longings  which  call  you 
up  to  God  ?  You  do  not  know  what  beneficence  there  is  in 
the  bosom  of  Christ  for  you.     I  preach  again  to  you  the  lov- 


The  Inteecession  of  Christ.  133 

ing  Savior,  the  sympathizing  Savior,  the  all-pervading  Savior, 
the  ever-living  Savior,  who,  having  felt  your  mortal  lot,  and 
borne  the  strokes  of  your  punishment,  stands  at  the  summit 
and  source  of  all  power,  that  he  may  be  the  Head  of  the 
Church,  and  your  Guide,  and  the  Captain  of  your  salvation. 
Trust  him. 


VI. 


tm,  tIjB  fulfilling  nf  tjjE  tm. 


Preached  Sabbath  mornijig,  August  "jth,  1859,  in  the  Old- 
Sc/iool  Presbyterian  Church  in  Peeks  kill,  N.Y.  It  is  inserted 
here  as  affording,  more  comprehensively,  perhaps,  than  any  other 
sermon  of  Mr.  Beecher's,  a  general  view  of  the  nature  of  true 
religion,  as  fotcnded  in  love. 


Love,  the  Fulfilling  of  the  Law. 


"  But  when  the  Pharisees  had  heard  that  he  had  put  the  Sadducees  to  silence, 
they  were  gathered  together.  Then  one  of  them,  which  was  a  lawyer, 
asked  him  a  question,  tempting  him,  and  saying,  Master,  which  is  the 
great  commandment  in  the  law  ?  Jesus  said  unto  him.  Thou  slialt  love 
the  Lord  thy  God  with  all  thy  heart,  and  with  all  thy  soul,  and  with  all 
thy  mind.  This  is  the  first  and  great  commandment.  And  the  sec- 
ond is  like  unto  it.  Thou  shalt  love  thy  neighbor  as  thyself.  On  these 
two  commandments  hang  all  the  law  and  the  prophets." — Matt.,  xxii., 
34-40. 

In  this  brief  word  Christ  has  drawn  away  the  veil  from 
the  heart  of  God,  and  let  us  see  its  very  central  secret.  It  is 
love. 

The  most  wonderful  work  of  art  in  all  ages,  doubtless,  was 
that  of  Phidias — the  famous  Jupiter.  No  artist  has  ever 
equaled  Phidias ;  probably  none  ever  will ;  for  we  shall  prob- 
ably never  have  an  age  again  whose  deejsest  life  will  be  ex- 
pressed by  the  instrumentality  of  art,  and  only  such  ages 
can  produce  such  artists  as  Greece  had  before  Christ,  and  It- 
aly afterward.  This  wonderful  statue  of  Jupiter  which  Phid- 
ias made  was  wrought  of  ivory  and  of  gold.  It  was  a  carved 
figure  sitting  upon  a  throne  with  majestic  air,  holding  in  its 
left  hand  a  statue  of  Victory,  and  in  its  right  hand  the  sceptre 
of  empire.  So  vast  was  this  extraordinary  work,  that,  sit- 
ting in  the  chair  of  state,  it  still  towered  forty  feet  in  height. 
Into  no  other  figure  and  face  had  art  ever  thrown  such  aston- 
ishing majesty.  Men  made  pilgrimages  to  see  it.  He  was 
counted  happy  who  had  seen,  and  he  was  counted  unfortu- 
nate who  died  without  seeing,  the  Phidian  Jupiter.  It  was 
placed  at  the  end  of  the  temple ;  and  historians  say  that  if 
it  had  risen  up  it  would  have  carried  away  the  roof  and  the 


138         Love,  the  Fulfilling  of  the  Law. 

ceiling  with  it,  so  tall  was  it.  Before  it  was  stretched  a  pur- 
ple curtain  to  hide  it  from  common  observation ;  but  on  ap- 
pointed festival  days  the  crowds  of  citizens — excited  by  an 
uninstructed  religious  fervor,  wild  with  exhilarating  dances, 
odorous  with  the  fragrance  of  costly  perfumes  through  whose 
smoke  they  passed,  as  censers  and  altars  shed  them  forth  at 
every  corner,  and  in  multitudes  along  every  square — drew 
near  to  the  temple ;  and  now,  when  sacrifices  were  made,  and 
the  vast  throng  were  hushed  with  silent  expectation,  at  a 
signal  the  priests  drew  back  the  purple  curtain,  and  the  vast 
statue,  white  as  snow  and  yellow  as  gold,  shone  forth  with 
such  amazing  lustre  that  the  crowd  were  subdued  to  tears ; 
some  fainted,  some  were  caught  into  a  nervous  furor  that  was 
counted  an  inspiration ;  and  not  one  was  there  among  them 
who,  for  the  moment,  doubted  the  reality  of  the  divme  Olym- 
pian Jupiter. 

And  yet  this  was  a  statue  that  spoke  not  a  word.  No 
heart  throbbed  there.  No  light  waked  in  those  eyes.  It 
was  a  mere  idol,  that  thought  not,  moved  not,  felt  not,  but 
sat  silent  amid  ages — silent  as  the  elements  of  which  it  was 
made — the  cast-off  trunk  of  elephants  in  African  forests — 
silent  as  gold  buried  in  the  mountains.  Not  one  of  all  that 
throng  but  had  more  life,  more  intelligence,  more  scope  and 
magnitude  of  existence  than  that  majestic  lie  before  which 
they  cast  themselves  down,  the  slaves  of  their  own  imagina- 
tions ! 

No  carved  stone,  no  ivory  and  gold,  have  ever  sought  to 
express  the  majesty  of  Jehovah.  These  things  were  good 
enough  for  Jupiter ;  they  were  unfit  for  Jehovah.  From  the 
beginning,  the  Hebrew  mind  could  find  nothing  on  earth — 
not  even  in  the  framework  of  the  globe  itself — to  represent 
their  conception  of  Jehovah.  The  morning  light  was  but  the 
golden  frino-e  of  his  garments.  Not  even  the  locks  of  his  hair 
were  to  be  so  likened.  His  slightest  look  they  called  light- 
ning. His  lowest  tones  wei'e  sonorous  bolts  of  resounding 
storms.     And  when  the  mischtiest  rendings  of  nature  were 


Love,  the  Fulfilling  of  the  Law.  139 

ended,  there  came  forth  a  promptmg  voice,  saying,  "  These 
are  parts  of  his  ways,  but  the  thunder  of  his  poAver  who  cau 
understand  ?" 

God  is  a  spirit.  Mortal  eye  can  not  behold  him.  Were 
God  to  appear  corporeally,  it  could  not  be  God,  but  only  a 
representative  form.  He  is  to  be  known  spiritually ;  that  is, 
by  thought  and  by  feeling — not  by  eyesight,  but  by  insight 
of  heart.  In  this  manner  Christ,  in  the  words  of  our  text, 
drew  back  the  veil  from  Jehovah,  and  disclosed  this  God  of 
love !  He  drew  back  the  veil  from  the  counsels  of  his  heart, 
and  revealed  love  as  the  secret  of  his  wisdom,  the  end  of  his 
thought,  the  genius  of  the  divine  disposition.  He  drew  back 
the  veil  from  Time  itself,  and  revealed  the  workings  of  his- 
tory, and  made  known  to  us  that  to  secure  the  dispositions 
of  love  all  those  events  and  arrangements  were  framed  which 
occupied  the  first  four  thousand  years  of  the  world,  and 
whose  outlines  constitute  the  Old  Testament.  He  drew 
back  the  veil  from  tlie  future,  and  revealed  to  us  that  this 
same  central  element  is  to  be  the  fulfilling  of  the  law  in  ages 
to  come.  And  since  the  days  of  Christ,  the  divine  Helms- 
man has  been  steering  the  ship  of  human  afiairs  right  to- 
ward this  light-house  of  the  universe — Ijove  /  for  such  do  I 
suppose  to  be  the  unrolled  and  interpreted  meaning  of  the 
words,  "  On  these  two  commandments  hang  all  the  law  and 
the  prophets."  All  that  was  recorded  in  the  past  or  foreseen 
in  the  future  pivoted  on  this  one  golden  centre — Love. 

If  men  do  not  understand  what  God  expects  of  them,  it  is 
not  for  want  of  explicit  teaching.  Words  can  not  be  plain- 
er, nor  ai-e  they  contradicted  by  cross-passages  that  obscure 
the  meaning.  The  whole  New  Testament  is  uniformly  con- 
sistent in  declaring  love  to  be  the  whole  duty  of  man. 

The  human  mind  is  a  kingdom  of  powers  or  faculties 
which  are  very  difierent  one  from  another,  but  which  may  be 
made  perfectly  to  harmonize.  When  they  are  influenced 
aright,  they,  like  the  instruments  of  a  band  of  music,  blend 
and  enrich  each  other ;  but  when  they  disagree,  they  clash, 


140         Love,  the  Fulfilling  of  the  Law. 

and,  as  with  an  ill-assorted  orchestra,  though  each  instrument 
be  good,  the  whole  effect  is  discordant  and  detestable, 

Now  how  shall  a  man  carry  his  mind  at  j^eace  with  itself 
— in  co-operative  harmony  ?  How  shall  he  carry  himself  in 
harmony  with  his  fellows?  How  shall  he  discharge  his 
duty,  in  short,  to  God,  to  men,  and  to  himself?  Is  there  any 
royal  road  to  this  ?  There  are  a  great  many  ways  in  which 
men  affect  to  discharge  this  duty,  according  to  the  different 
ideas  entertained  by  different  individuals  in  respect  to  what 
constitutes  right  living.  One  man  says  that  we  ought  to  be 
governed  by  reason  in  all  things,  and  that  where  men  are 
governed  by  reason  they  will  live  as  well  as  they  can  be  ex- 
pected to  live  in  this  world.  Another  man  thinks  that  we 
ought  to  be  just.  He  looks  upon  conscience  as  the  govern- 
ing element  of  a  well-ordered  life,  and  says,"  If  men  were  only 
just,  how  perfectly  would  they  live  !"  Another  man  regards 
worship  as  the  controlling  principle  of  our  conduct  in  life, 
and  says,  "He  that  reveres  God,  and  walks  humbly  before 
him,  can  scarcely  go  astray."  Another  man  believes  honesty 
and  industry  to  be  the  prime  characteristics  of  right  living, 
and  says,  "  He  is  sufficiently  good  who  is  both  honest  and  in- 
dustrious." Another  man  esteems  good  citizenship  to  be  the 
most  essential  quality  of  human  conduct.  But,  high  above 
all  these,  the  voice  of  God  says,  "Xoue  is  the  fulfilling  of  the 
law;"  and  he  who  wishes  to  know  how  to  carry  his  mind 
aright  must  learn  the  philosophy  of  love.  He  who  wishes  to 
know  how  to  shape  his  life  aright  among  his  fellow-men  must 
learn  the  way  of  love.  There  is  but  one  pilot  from  the  cra- 
dle to  the  grave — there  is  but  one  pilot  from  this  world  to 
the  eternal  sphere — and  his  name  is  Love.  He  never  steers 
the  ship  upon  the  rocks,  and  no  other  pilot  ever  carried  it 
through  the  voyage  of  life  unwrecked. 

I  propose  this  morning,  first,  to  examine  what  is  the  indis- 
putable testimony  of  Scripture  on  this  doctrine  of  love  ;  sec- 
ondly, to  ask  what  is  included  in  this  feeling ;  thirdly,  to  in- 
quire what  is  the  condition  in  which  it  is  to  exist  in  us ;  and 


Love,  the  Fulfilling  of  the  Law.  141 

fourthly,  to  consider  its  relations  to  the  work  of  Christiani- 
ty hi  the  mdividual  and  in  the  world  at  large,  and  the  meth- 
ods of  obtaining  and  cultivating  it. 

First,  look  to  the  testimony  of  the  Bible  to  see  whether  I 
am  right  in  saying  that  the  great  controlling  influence  of  re- 
ligious life  is  to  be  love  to  God  and  to  man.  Recall  the 
words  of  our  Savior  in  the  text : 

"Master,  which  is  the  great  commandment  in  the  law? 
Jesus  said  unto  him,  Thou  shalt  love  the  Lord  thy  God  with 
all  thy  heart,  and  with  all  thy  soul,  and  with  all  thy  mind. 
This  is  the  first  and  great  commandment.  And  the  second 
is  like  unto  it,  Thou  shalt  love  thy  neighbor  as  thyself  On 
these  two  commandments  hang  all  the  law  and  the  prophets." 

The  law  and  the  prophets  are  nothing  without  love  ;  this 
is  the  sum,  and  uicludes  them  all.  Listen  to  the  testimony 
of  the  apostle  in  the  9th  and  10th  verses  of  the  13th  chapter 
of  Romans : 

"  For  this.  Thou  shalt  not  commit  adultery,  Thou  shalt  not 
kill,  Thou  shalt  not  steal.  Thou  shalt  not  bear  false  witness, 
Thou  shalt  not  covet ;  and  if  there  be  any  other  command- 
ment, it  is  briefly  comprehended  in  this  saying,  namely,  Thou 
shalt  love  thy  neighbor  as  thyself  Love  worketh  no  ill  to 
his  neighbor;  therefore  love  is  the  fulfilling  of  the  law" — the 
complete  obedience  of  it. 

Listen  again  to  the  words  of  the  apostle  as  expressed  in  the 
13th  and  14th  verses  of  the  5th  chapter  of  Galatians: 

"  For,  brethren,  ye  have  been  called  unto  liberty ;  only  use 
not  libei'ty  for  an  occasion  to  the  flesh,  but  by  love  serve  one 
another.  For  all  the  law  is  fulfilled  in  one  word,  even  in 
this,  Thou  shalt  love  thy  neighbor  as  thyself" 

"  This  is  the  message,"  says  John,  "  that  ye  heard  from  the 
beginning."  There  never  has  been  any  other  testimony,  i.  e., 
but  this,  "\yhat  is  it  ?  "  That  we  should  love  one  another." 
This  is  the  great  message  to  man.  "  "We  know  that  we  have 
passed  from  death  unto  life,  because  we  love  the  brethren." 
This  quality  of  love  is  the  very  evidence  that  we  are  Chris- 


142  Love,  the  Fulfilling  of  the  Law. 

tians.  And  again,  "  If  we  love  one  another,  God  dwelleth 
in  us." 

There  are- a  great  many  people  that  have  plenty  of  evi- 
dences of  religion,  but  none  of  love,  which  goes  to  show  that 
a  man  may  have  religion  without  being  a  Christian.  There 
is  many  a  man  that  worships  whose  worship  is  devoid  of  the 
important  element  of  love  to  man.  It  is  only  those  who  love 
all  men  that  are  true  followers  of  Christ. 

We  perceive,  then,  that  love,  according  to  the  plain  inter- 
pretation of  Scripture,  is  put  as  a  universal  duty.  It  is  the 
criterion  and  evidence  of  a  regenerated  state.  It  is  the  test 
of  God's  indwelling  in  the  soul.  It  is  the  end  to  which  life 
should  tend.     It  is  the  design  and  fulfillment  of  God's  law. 

Now  of  no  other  feeling  have  such  things  been  said  in 
Scripture.  It  is  that  for  which  the  law  was  put  over  us ;  it 
is  all  that  the  law  requires  of  us.  If  a  man  will  fulfill  this 
simple  requirement  of  the  law — not,  perhaps,  according  to 
his  meagre  understanding  of  it,  but  as  Scripture  interprets  it 
— he  need  not  trouble  himself  about  any  thing  else.  If  you 
will  strike  for  that  central  disposition,  every  thing  else  will 
follow  of  its  own  self. 

Thousands  are  anxious  to  know  how  to  be  Christians,  how 
to  live  happily  and  to  die  safely.  They  have  rejected  this 
plain  teaching  of  Scripture,  or  changed  it  into  something  else, 
they  know  not  what,  so  that  they  are  in  doubt  as  to  what  is 
the  true  Christian  course.  They  say, "  If  there  was  a  plain  line 
of  conduct  marked  out  which  I  could  understand,  and  which 
I  could  see  before  me  as  plainly  as  I  see  the  path  in  which  I 
tread,  I  would  gladly  follow  it,  and  be  a  Christian."  Here  is 
such  a  line  of  conduct  marked  out.  There  is  no  other  road 
half  so  plain  as  this  royal  road  of  God.  He  has  paved  it,  not 
with  stones,  but  with  gold ;  and  he  says  to  every  man,  "  If 
you  will  love  the  Lord  your  God  with  all  your,  heart,  and 
soul,  and  mind,  and  your  neighbor  as  yourself,  there  is  no 
other  law  for  you.  In  doing  this  you  do  all  that  is  required 
of  you." 


Love,  the  Fulfilling  of  the  Law.  143 

Many  people  think  that  living  a  Christian  life  is  a  won- 
derfully comprehensive  thing,  and  they  spend  so  much  time 
watching  their  motives  and  actions  that  they  have  little  or 
no  time  to  attend  to  any  thing  else.  There  is  but  one  thing 
required  of  man,  and  that  is,  that  he  shall  have  love.  If  you 
take  care  of  that,  every  thing  else  will  take  care  of  itself. 
There  are  other  feelings  and  attributes  essential  to  the  soul, 
but  these  necessarily  exist  and  act  where  there  is  love.  As 
in  a  watch  there  is  a  spring,  which,  if  you  coil  it  up,  will  of 
itself  keep  all  the  wheels  in  motion,  so  there  is  in  the  human 
soul  a  spring  which,  if  you  wind  it  up,  will  uncoil  itself,  and 
carry  forward  every  thing  related  to  your  duties  and  con- 
duct in  this  world.  Do  I  exaggerate,  then,  the  importance 
of  this  emotion  ?  Does  not  Scripture  rank  it  as  the  chiefest 
among  all  the  Christian  states  ?  Must  not  all  other  assumed 
tests  of  religion  give  place  to  this  ? 

Secondly,  let  us  look  at  the  inquiry.  What  is  included  in 
this  love  ?  What  does  it  mean  ?  God  has  made  in  the  hu- 
man soul  a  threefold  provision  for  the  exercise  of  affection. 
The  first  is  love,  which  takes  hold  of  youth,  and  infancy,  and 
weakness,  and  which  is  peculiarly  designed  to  meet  the  ex- 
igency of  birth  and  childhood.  No  other  form  of  love  can 
meet  that  want  so  well  as  the  instinct  of  maternal  love. 
Benevolence  is  too  vague,  and  affection  too  exacting.  The 
patience,  the  watchfulness,  and  the  tenderness  required  for 
helpless  infancy  must  have  a  special  instinct  scarcely  at  all 
depending  upon  reflection.  This  is  given  to  all  animals.  It 
inspires  gentleness  in  the  lioness  and  the  tigress.  The  she- 
wolf  licks  her  whelps  with  loving,  amiable  kindness,  and 
seems  half  human. 

The  second  form  of  love  is  higher  and  wider  than  maternal 
love.  It  may  be  denominated  personal  affection.  It  is  that 
love  which  exists  between  two  persons  of  congenial  disjDOsi- 
tion.  It  depends  upon  character — upon  the  perception  of 
some  supposed  attractive  element  of  mind.  It  is  individual, 
having  usually,  in  each  case,  but  a  single  object.    But,  though 


144         Love,  the  Fulfilling  of  the  Law. 

it  is  a  glorioiis  attribute,  unknown  in  the  brute  creation  be- 
low us,  it  is  limited.  It  may  exist  in  men  without  very  high 
moral  quality.  Indeed,  there  are  very  many  exceedingly 
selfish  persons  that  love  intensely ;  and  love  itself  may  be 
the  highest  form  of  selfishness,  as  when  it  exists  between  two 
individuals  merely  conscious  of  the  admiration  and  of  the 
j)leasure  which  they  afibrd  to  each  other. 

The  third  and  highest  form  of  love  is  that  disposition 
which  is  usually  called  benevolence,  and  which  consists  in 
good- will,  a  spirit  of  active  kindness,  and  afiection  to  all  men, 
without  regard  to  their  character.  Ordinary  affection  takes 
heed  to  character,  and  we  love  men  in  proportion  as  they 
come  up  to  our  ideas  of  human  life ;  but  benevolence,  al- 
though it  regards  character,  and  delights  to  see  right  living 
among  men,  yet  exercises  itself  more  intensely  toward  the 
weak,  and  ignorant,  and  sinful,  than  toward  the  strong,  and 
intelligent,  and  good. 

If  I  go  out  to  seek  companionship  for  life,  or  for  a  journey, 
or  a  voyage,  I  avoid  persons  of  ill  temj^er,  persons  who  are 
ignorant,  persons  whose  disjiositions  are  uncongenial  to  me. 
I  seek  some  one  who  is  kind,  who  is  intelligent,  whose  traits 
all  play  sweetly,  like  summer,  on  my  disposition.  "WTien  I 
find  such  a  man,  I  select  him  for  his  good  qualities,  and  the 
pleasurable  effects  he  is  calculated  to  produce  upon  me. 
"When  I  go  out  seeking  to  do  good,  I  do  not  look  for  men 
that  are  already  good,  but  for  those  who  are  out  of  the  way. 
If  I  went  forth  m  New  York  to  do  good  to  the  children  in 
the  streets,  I  should  not  turn  my  attention  to  those  clad  in 
silk  dresses,  with  clean  faces,  that  had  just  come  from  well- 
to-do,  intelligent,  and  cleanly  parents,  and  that  seemed  com- 
fortable and  happy.  I  should  say,  "They  are  well  enough 
provided  for  already."  I  should  go  past  them,  although 
in  going  past  them  I  might  look  lovingly  upon  them.  I 
should  direct  my  attention  to  the  children  that  were  meanly 
clad  and  unwashed,  that  had  come  from  poor  and  negligent 
parents,  or  that  had  no  parents  at  all;  and  I  should  say, 


Love,  the  Fulfilling  of  the  Law.  145 

"Here  are  the  ones  that  need  me."  I  should  select  these, 
not  because  they  were  so  good,  but  because  they  were  so 
bad.  If  I  sought  a  child  to  carry  in  my  bosom,  I  should 
seek  one  with  a  sweet  disposition,  and  that  had  been  well 
reared ;  but  if,  in  a  spirit  of  benevolence,  I  sought  a  child 
that  I  might  do  it  good,  I  should  seek  one  that  was  uncared 
for,  and  I  should  feel  that  the  lower  and  the  worse  it  was, 
the  more  it  needed  me.  Personal  love  always  works  up- 
ward ;  but  benevolence,  or  that  love  which  is  characterized 
by  good-will  and  compassion,  works  also  downward.  There 
is  nothing  else  like  this  benevolence.  In  the  mind  there  is  no 
analogy  for  it.  There  is  no  evidence  that  any  other  feeling 
was  ever  meant  to  have  such  breadth,  variety,  and  universal 
function  as  this  has. 

To  these  three  forms  of  affection  I  must  not  fail  to  add 
a  caj)acity  for  a  higher  love  than  this  social  faculty,  by 
which  we  are  able  to  develop  out  of  ourselves  a  true  love 
for  that  which  is  invisible,  supreme  and  jDcrfect — the  ideal 
religious  love.  This  is  given  us  that  we  may  find  our  way 
up  to  God,  whom  we  have  not  seen,  with  love  and  trust. 
Tliis  capacity,  and  the  three  kinds  of  affection  which  I  have 
just  described,  form  the  constitutional  elements  in  the  soul 
by  which  we  are  to  love.  Now  it  is  the  whole  of  this  nature 
which  God  designs  to  have  developed  and  made  sujDerior  in 
us,  in  power,  predominance,  and  activity,  to  all  other  things ; 
but  the  leading  element  is  to  be  diffusive,  universal  benevo- 
lence. This  is  the  element  which  is  to  exert  the  greatest  in- 
fluence over  our  conduct.  The  man  who  is  projDerly  influ- 
enced by  it  habitually  performs  generous  deeds,  is  filled  with 
feelings  of  kindness,  and  longs  for  the  good  of  others.  It 
may,  in  individual  instances,  take  on  the  form  of  personal  af- 
fection, and  manifest  itself  in  feelings  of  compassion  and 
pity ;  but  it  consists  in  that  whole,  large,  round,  comprehen- 
sive mood  of  mind,  which  includes  all  kind  feeling  and  well- 
wishing  toward  men. 

Thirdly,  what  is  the  condition  in  which  this  state  of  mind 

n.— K 


146         Love,  the  Fulfilling  of  the  Law. 

is  to  exist?  We  are  conscious  that  our  feelings  exist  in  a 
twofold  way — first,  as  impulses,  and,  second,  as  dispositions ; 
and  it  is  important  to  discriminate  between  these.  The 
former  are  occasional,  the  latter  are  permanent.  The  former 
are  single  acts,  the  latter  are  states  in  which  oixr  faculties 
abide.  The  former  send  a  flash  through  the  mind,  the  lat- 
ter abide  as  an  atmosphere.  Now  in  which  of  these  two 
ways  is  love  to  exist  in  the  mind  ?  Is  it  to  be  an  occasional 
emotion  or  an  abiding  state  ? 

We  shall,  by  turning  a  moment  aside,  and  examining  the 
way  in  which  the  mind  loves,  come  to  a  better  understand- 
ing of  what  we  mean  by  a  state,  or  atmosphere,  or  disposi- 
tion, in  distinction  from  occasional  and  special  impulse. 

There  is  in  every  man  a  capacity,  under  certain  circum- 
stances, of  using  every  faculty  he  has ;  but  there  is  some 
faculty,  or  some  class  or  combination  of  faculties,  in  each 
man,  in  which  his  life  tends  to  abide ;  and  when  he  is  moved 
out  of  it,  he  tends  to  settle  back  to  it.  He  finds  his  natural 
equilibrium  and  rest  in  it.  That  is  what  we  mean  when  we 
say  a  man  has  a  disposition.  When  a  man  has  certain  traits 
which  constitute  the  leading  features  of  his  character,  we 
call  those  traits  his  disposition.  Thus  there  are  some  men 
that  live  in  their  thoughts.  They  are  dry  every  where  ex- 
cept in  their  intellect,  but  there  they  are  juicy.  You  may, 
by  placmg  a  sj^ecial  motive  before  their  mind,  wake  up  some 
strong  feeling  in  them,  but,  like  dew  on  grass,  it  soon  passes 
away.  No  sooner  is  this  motive  removed  than  they  relapse 
into  their  ordinary  state.  They  have  a  meditative,  reflective, 
perceiving  mind,  but  are  not  men  of  much  emotion. 

There  are  other  men  who  live  in  the  imagination.  They 
dream  all  their  life  long.  On  a  sj)ecial  impulse  they  open 
their  eyes,  and  see  things  as  they  are ;  but  the  moment  the 
hard,  practical  necessity  which  disturbs  them  has  given  way, 
and  they  are  at  liberty  to  do  what  they  love  to  do  best,  back 
they  sink  into  day-dreams.  That  is  their  disposition.  They 
are  natural  dreamers. 


Love,  the  Fulfilling  of  the  Law.  147 

There  are  others  who  live  wholly  in  their  feelings.  They 
can,  by  effort,  go  out  into  the  realm  of  thought,  but  they  are 
emotive  in  their  nature.  Round  and  full  they  are  with 
heart-sap.  Sometimes  they  study,  and  sometimes  they  rea- 
son with  considerable  difficulty ;  but  the  moment  the  motive 
to  mental  effort  is  removed,  back  they  sink  into  their  affec- 
tional  life,  where  they  feel  at  ease,  and  where  every  thing  is 
bright  and  rosy  as  the  morning  sun.  Such  is  their  disj)Osi- 
tion. 

Life  is  full  of  other  examples  of  the  peculiar  dispositions 
of  men.  Some  men  are  habitually  in  a  state  of  industry. 
They  are  idle  sometimes,  but  idleness  with  them  is  special — 
it  is  the  exception.  Industry  is  their  abiding  state.  They 
even  begrudge  themselves  their  sleep.  They  are  restless  night 
and  day.  Some  men  are  habitually  indolent.  They  will  rouse 
up  under  some  necessity  or  pressure,  and  may  be  pushed  into 
industry ;  but  oh !  how  glad  they  are  when  the  necessity  or 
pressure  ceases.  Some  men  are  habitually  in  a  state  of  good- 
nature. Once  in  a  while  they  get  vexed,  and  exhibit  ill-na- 
tured feelings,  and  then  every  body  talks  about  them,  say- 
ing, "  I  saw  him  angry  once."  Others  are  almost  always 
peevish ;  but  now  and  then  they  manifest  mild  feelings,  and 
you  hear  people  say  of  them,  "  I  recollect  once  to  have  seen 
him  good-natured."  Some  men  are  irritable,  morose,  disa- 
greeable. They  are  unhappy  themselves,  and  they  make 
others  unhappy.  That  is  their  general  state ;  but  sometimes 
they  rise  into  the  opposite  state  for  a  short  period. 

You  are  familiar  with  the  fact  that  men  who  are  ordinari- 
ly courageous  sometimes  become  cowards  for  a  moment,  but 
suddenly  fly  back,  like  a  spring,  to  their  former  condition. 
Courage  is  their  natural  state.  You  are  also  familiar  with 
the  fact  that  men  who  are  ordinarily  cowards  occasionally 
become  courageous ;  but  their  natural  state  is  tunidity.  So 
in  respect  to  refinements ;  some  men  live  in  them.  They  ap- 
preciate that  which  is  fine  and  beautiful,  and  they  seek  it, 
and  are  unhappy  without  it.     They  may  at  times  become 


148         Love,  the  Fulfilling  of  the  Law. 

coarse  and  rude,  but  it  is  not  natural  to  them  to  be  so.  Oth- 
ers are  habitually  gross  and  vulgar.  They  may  occasional- 
ly be  elevated  into  a  state  of  nobleness,  and  purity,  and  re- 
finement, and  good  taste,  but  this  is  not  their  ordinary  state. 

We  see  the  same  thing  in  business  life.  Some  men  are  ha- 
bitually humble  and  generous.  It  is  their  tendency  to  be 
so,  if  they  are  let  alone.  They  occasionally  get  out  of  this 
state.  Sometimes  emergencies  take  them  oiF  their  guard, 
and  cause  them  to  depart  from  their  usual  mood;  but  this 
is  not  common  with  them.  On  the  other  hand,  many  men 
are  crabbed,  and  knavish,  and  selfish,  and  hard,  and  ugly. 
They  surprise  ^very  body,  once  in  a  while,  by  doing  a  good 
and  generous  deed,  and  by  manifesting  a  sweet  temper ;  but 
this  state,  in  their  case,  is  only  temporary. 

These  are  illustrations  drawn  from  common  life,  since  I  am 
speaking  to  the  common  people,  to  show  what  I  mean  by  a 
state  or  disposition,  in  distinction  from  a  special  volition. 
And  the  question  is  this :  "What  is  the  command  of  God  in 
respect  to  the  matter  of  love  ?  Is  it  to  be  an  occasional  im- 
pulse ?  Are  we,  when  the  Sabbath  day  comes,  to  take  out 
our  heart,  and  select  from  it  love  as  an  arrow,  and  let  it  fly 
at  the  target  in  the  sanctuary,  and  say, "  There,  my  shaft  has 
sped ;  I  have  done  my  duty  to-day ;"  or  is  it  to  be  the  con- 
tinual experience  of  our  life  ?  Is  it  to  be  an  impulse  pro- 
voked by  occasion  and  necessity  ?  or  is  it  to  be  an  abiding 
state  lying  behind  all  the  activities  of  our  nature,  propelling 
and  directing  them  ?  Love  is  to  take  precedence  of  all  our 
other  feelings.  It  is  to  be  the  chief  element  of  our  life.  It 
is  to  be  our  meat  and  drink.  The  great  commandment  of  the 
laAV  is, "  Thou  shalt  love  the  Lord  thy  God  with  all  thy  heart, 
and  with  all  thy  soul,  and  with  all  thy  strength,  and  with  all 
thy  mind,  and" — there  is  not  a  great  gulf  between  the  two 
parts,  but  only  room  to  take  breath — "  and  thy  neighbor  as 
thyself"  They  come  together  as  twins.  And  this  is  to  be 
the  power  and  scope  of  the  love  we  are  to  have ;  it  is  to  be 
a  love  that  fills  the  head,  and  the  heart,  and  the  nature,  and 


Love,  the  Fulfilling  of  the  Law.  149 

the  life.  I  do  not  mean  to  say  that  a  man  can  not  be  a 
Christian  unless  he  is  perfected  in  love ;  but  I  do  mean  to 
say  that  the  ideal  of  a  Christian  life  includes  a  heart  whose 
supreme  purpose  is  love — whose  chief  aim  is  to  develop  it- 
self according  to  the  divine  law  of  love  toward  God  and 
man.  Thus  much,  then,  as  to  the  nature  of  this  feeling,  and 
as  to  the  condition  in  which  it  must  exist. 

Fourthly,  I  am  to  ask  your  attention  to  the  relations  of 
this  disposition  of  love  to  the  work  of  Christianity  in  the  in- 
dividual and  in  the  world.  This  disposition  of  love  being 
that  which  comprehends  and  measures  all  other  qualities,  so 
it  is  the  atmosphere  in  which  all  other  qualities  ripen,  and  in 
which  only  are  they  perfect.  Love  is  itself  a  perfect  thing. 
No  other  feeling  is.  Each  feeling  of  oixr  nature  must  be 
gilded  by  it  before  it  has  its  proper  hue  and  quality.  The  re- 
lation of  this  disposition  of  love,  then,  to  the  understanding 
of  God  will  claim  our  first  attention. 

"VVe  understand  God  by  something  developed  in  ourselves 
that  is  like  him.  We  know  of  God  only  so  much  as  we  im- 
itate or  feel.  If  you  take  any  disposition,  if  you  go  out  with 
it  into  life,  and  if  you,  in  your  sphere,  act  as  God  would  act, 
then  you  become,  in  your  measure,  acquainted  with  the  very 
things  that  are  revealed  of  him.  God  is  revealed  to  us  by 
being  revealed  in  us,  as  when,  in  the  power  of  his  spirit,  the 
heart  feels  as  he  feels.  Thus  by  our  experience  we  know 
something  of  the  interior  nature  of  God,  It  is  not,  therefore, 
by  stress  of  thinking  that  men  discover  God.  Neither  do 
they  discover  him  by  potency  of  petitions  in  prayer.  We 
discover  God  by  the  reproduction  of  him  in  ourselves — by 
shaping  in  ourselves  something  that  is  like  him.  Hence 
Christ  said,  "  Blessed  are  the  pure  in  heart,  for  they  shall  see 
God."  It  is  only  by  being  pure  that  you  can  see  him. 
Prayers  for  Christian  graces,  therefore,  are  usually  answered, 
if  at  all,  through  long  evolving  processes  of  life.  When  we 
ask  God  to  reveal  himself  to  us,  let  us  not  look  u]?,  and  fix 
our  eyes  on  the  clouds,  hoping  that  we  may  behold  him  with 


150         Love,  the  Fulfilling  of  the  Law. 

our  outward  vision.  The  body  will  never  see  God.  We  are 
to  see  him  by  our  dispositions,  by  our  affections.  Let  those 
who  have  tried  in  vain  to  find  out  more  of  his  character  from 
the  Bible,  and  who  have  tried  in  vain  to  find  out  more  of  his 
character  in  the  closet,  not  study  the  Bible  less,  nor  visit  the 
closet  less,  but  let  them  do  that  which  is  to  interpret  the 
one,  and  give  benefit  to  the  other — let  them  undertake  to 
experience  in  their  own  hearts  those  qualities  for  which  they 
search  and  supplicate,  and  they  shall  find  a  better  commen- 
tary than  was  ever  written.  Try  to  live  right.  God's  na- 
ture interj)rets  what  our  nature  is  to  be.  "We  are  to  carry 
ourselves  toward  all  men  in  such  a  way  that  we  shall  love 
them  and  wish  them  well — toward  all  men ;  not  merely  to- 
ward our  friends,  not  toward  the  noble  and  excellent  alone, 
but  also  toward  the  poor,  toward  the  rude,  toward  the  vul- 
gar, toward  the  child,  toward  the  man,  toward  the  stranger, 
toward  the  white,  toward  the  black,  toward  every  human  be- 
ing that  God  has  created,  toward  every  sentient  creature 
that  is  conscious  of  happiness,  and  that  is  capable  of  being 
improved  and  made  better.  You  are  to  carry  your  mind  in 
such  a  state  toward  them  that  you  will  not  only  wish  them 
fWell,  but  will  desire  to  confer  blessings  upon  them.  When 
a  man  stands  so  suffused  with  this  disposition  that  every  day 
and  hour  his  heart  is  filled  with  yearning  feelings  of  good- 
will toward  his  fellow-men,  he  is,  in  some  measure,  in  that 
abiding  state  in  which  God  dwells. 

What  arc  called  Christian  graces  must  be  interpreted  from 
this  stand-point.  Gentleness,  peace,  joy,  patience,  self-denial, 
hope — all  these  are  the  products  of  love.  They  are  but  this 
feeling  of  love  evolved  in  different  ways.  There  are  two 
methods  of  seeking  these  things.  One  is  to  let  life  flow  on 
as  it  chooses,  making  special  spiritual  efforts,  however,  to  ob- 
tain each  of  them.  Some  men  think  it  is  their  duty  to  put 
on  Christian  graces.  They  read  about  them,  and  pray  for 
them.  They  desire  meekness.  They  look  in  the  commen- 
tary to  see  what  meekness  means,  and  they  ask  God  for  it. 


Love,  the  Fulfilling  of  the  Law.         151 

and  hope  it  will  come  to  them.  They  seem  to  think  that  in 
some  mysterious  way  he  will  drop  the  graces  which  they 
seek  from  heaven  upon  them;  that  he  will  place  them  as 
jewels  on  their  spiritual  hand.  ^  And  is  it  by  virtue  of  prayer 
alone  that  you  hope  to  obtain  Christian  graces?  I  do  not 
wish  to  undervalue  the  power  of  prayer,  but  if  prayer  is  an- 
swered at  all,  it  is  answered,  not  in  the  closet,  but  in  the  life. 
If  God  gives  to  man  the  graces  of  the  Spirit,  he  gives  them 
to  him  by  augmenting  his  love ;  and  when  a  man  prays  for 
Christian  graces,  let  him  pray  that  he  may  have  a  larger 
measure  of  this  disposition.  If  a  man  desiring  Christian 
graces  goes  forth  with  love  and  gentleness  among  his  fellow- 
men,  and  is  willing  to  make  sacrifices  for  their  well-being, 
and  counts  his  life  rich  in  proportion  as  he  is  able  to  do 
good  to  others,  and  says, "  I  make  myself  the  servant  of  all 
for  Christ's  sake" — if  a  man  seeks  Christian  graces  in  that 
way,  he  shall  find  that  the  reproduction  of  love  in  his  soul  is 
fruitful  of  all  that  he  seeks. 

It  is  wonderful  that  we  do  not  take  a  hint  in  this  matter 
from  the  fact  that,  in  secular  life,  when  we  seek  favors  at  the 
hands  of  men,  we  endeavor  to  bring  them  into  a  good-na- 
tured state.  We  know  that  when  a  man  is  benevolent  and 
sympathetic,  he  is  in  the  state  in  which  we  can  draw  more 
good  things  from  him  than  when  he  is  in  any  other  state. 
If  we  go  to  one  for  some  kindness,  we  do  not  go  to  him  on 
those  days  when  he  is  gloomy,  when  his  nerves  are  shaken, 
when  his  health  is  suffering,  and  when  his  business  is  going 
wrong ;  we  go  to  him  when  he  is  full-fed,  and  comfortable, 
and  genial,  as  it  is  at  such  times  that  he  is  most  likely  to 
grant  our  request.  We  bring  him  into  a  good  condition  with 
himself;  and  when  his  mind  is  in  a  high  and  summery  mood, 
we  let  out  our  little  secret  with  a  reasonable  hoj^e  of  success. 
This  is  the  worldly  way  of  dealing  with  men  when  we  would 
have  them  yield  to  our  wishes.  When  men  wish  to  grow  in 
Chi'istian  graces  they  must  lift  their  souls  up  into  the  at- 
mosphere of  divine  benevolence,  and  out  of  real,  pure  ge- 


152  Love,  the  Fulfilling  of  the  Law. 

nial  love  all  Christian  graces  will  flow  most  easily  and  nat- 
urally ! 

I  remark  again  ui^on  the  relation  of  this  disposition  of 
love  to  the  jjerformance  of  duties.  Those  duties  which  are 
impelled  by  fear  are  always  caustic,  and  those  duties  which 
are  impelled  by  conscience  are  usually  hard,  but  those  du- 
ties which  spring  from  love  are  always  easy.  Hence  Christ 
says,  "  My  yoke  is  easy,  and  my  burden  is  light."  Look  at 
the  way  in  which  a  slave  bears  the  burden  put  upon  him. 
It  is  fear  that  drives  him  to  bear  them,  and  consequently 
they  are  heavy.  If  you  look  at  men  who  carry  the  burdens 
of  pride,  and  avarice,  and  selfishness,  you  will  find  that  their 
faces  are  never  handsome.  Their  passions  plow  deep  fur- 
rows on  their  brows.  The  lower  faculties  of  such  men  work 
painfully.  And  if  you  look  at  those  men  who  do  what 
they  do  conscientiously — not  because  they  love  to  do  it,  but 
because  they  have  what  is  called  a  "  sense  of  responsibility" 
— you  will  find  that  they  carry  their  duties  as  heavy  bur- 
dens. There  are  duties,  I  am  aware,  that  are  impelled  by 
conscientiousness,  which  I  do  not  wish  to  decry ;  but  there 
are  a  great  many  men  who  live  in  bondage  through  fear 
of  death.  It  is  their  duty  to  i^ray,  and  so  they  pray ;  it  is 
their  duty  to  read,  and  so  they  read ;  it  is  their  duty  to 
work,  and  so  they  work.  It  is  better  that  they  should  do 
these  things  from  this  motive  than  that  they  should  not 
do  them  at  all,  but  it  would  be  much  better  still  if  they 
would  do  them  from  the  motive  of  love.  If  you  wish  to 
go  from  one  side  to  the  other  of  a  steep,  high  hill,  and 
there  is  a  road  through  it,  how  much  better  it  is  to  take  that 
road  than  to  climb  over  the  top  of  the  hill.  Now  there  is 
such  a  road  as  this  to  the  jserformance  of  duties,  and  that  is 
the  road  of  love.  If  a  man  does  the  things  that  he  has  to  do 
in  any  other  spirit  than  that  of  love,  they  are  irksome  tasks ; 
but  if  he  does  them  in  a  sj)irit  of  love,  how  his  face  laughs ! 
how  his  hand  tingles  !  how  radiant  is  every  part  of  his  life  ! 

If  one  were  sent  to  take  care  of  the  poor,  miserable,  wound- 


Love,  the  Fulfilling  of  the  Law.         153 

ed  soldiers  lying  in  the  plague-stricken  hospitals  on  the  plain 
of  Solferino,  he  would  say  to  himself,  "Money  would  not  hire 
me  to  do  it,  but  I  must  do  it  because  it  is  my  duty.  Here 
are  men  who  are  suffering  and  need  attention,  and  I  am 
bound  to  look  after  their  wants,"  But  let  mo  find  my  own 
son  among  those  unfortunate  creatures,  and,  no  matter  how 
loathsome  might  be  the  offices  to  be  performed  toward  him, 
could  money  buy  from  me  the  privilege  of  ministering  to 
his  necessities  ?  Could  any  motive  induce  me  to  leave  his 
side  day  or  night  ?  That  which  I  should  do  in  the  one  case 
through  conscientiousness,  or  from  a  sense  of  duty,  and 
which  would  be  a  disagreeable  task,  I  should  do  in  the  other 
case  through  love,  and  it  would  then  be  a  pleasure  to  me. 
I  should  do  it  with  delight.  There  would  not  be  hours 
enough  in  which  I  might  serve  in  love  my  wounded  son. 

Think  of  the  things  a  mother  does  for  her  child.  She  gives 
it  her  life.  She  can  not  serve  it  enough.  To  her  there  is 
nothing  but  "  My  babe."  It  is  her  joy,  her  pleasure,  night 
and  day.  There  are  offices  that  she  has  to  perform  toward 
it  that  are  disagreeable  for  the  moment,  but  her  love  for  it 
enables  her  to  perform  them  with  willingness,  and  to  forget 
all  connected  with  them  which  is  unpleasant.  And  thus  are 
fulfilled  the  words  of  Christ  when  he  says  "My  yoke  is 
easy,  and  my  burden  is  light."  Not  that  the  things  which 
you  do  from  love  are  not  sometimes  hard,  but  there  is  a 
way  in  which  you  can  engineer  hard  things  and  make  them 
seem  easy.  Love,  and  love  enough,  and  your  burdens  will 
not  seem  heavy.  Love  is  able  to  steer  you  over  all  difficul- 
ty. Employ  it,  and  it  will  caiTy  you  through  life  Avith  pow- 
er adequate  to  your  exigencies.  He  that  knows  how  to  love 
much  knows  every  thing. 

I  ask  your  attention  also  to  the  relation  of  this  disposition 
of  love  to  your  treatment  of  your  fellow-men.  No  man  can 
form  right  moral  judgments  about  his  fellow-men  until  he 
does  it  in  a  spirit  of  love.  So  long  as  you  are  angry  toward 
a  man,  your  judgment  of  him  can  not  be  right ;  nor  so  long 


15-i  LoYE,  THE  Fulfilling  of  tee  Law. 

as  you  are  envious  toward  him,  nor  so  long  as  you  wish  to 
use  him  for  your  own  selfish  purposes.  Unless  you  regard 
your  fellow-men  with  a  spirit  of  sympathy  and  kindness,  you 
can  not  form  a  judgment  of  them  that  is  even  just.  Before 
you  can  form  a  right  judgment  of  a  man,  you  must  love  him. 

Is  there  a  man  occupying  some  public  station  in  life  whom 
you  hate  ?  I  say  to  you, "  Stop  !  you  do  not  love  him ;  you 
can  not  form  a  right  judgment  of  him."  Is  there  a  man  who 
is  under  arrest  for  the  commission  of  some  wrong,  whom  every 
body  is  railing  against,  and  in  talking  about  whom  every  body 
gets  red  in  the  face,  yourself  among  the  number  ?  I  say  to 
you, "  Stop  !  you  do  not  love  him ;  you  are  not  competent  to 
form  a  right  judgment  of  him."  The  moment  I  find  a  man  that 
loves  him,  I  hear  a  different  story  from  that  which  is  told  by 
those  that  do  not  love  him.  You  can  never  form  any  thing  like 
a  right  judgment  of  a  man  until  you  can  say,  "I  love  him  as  a 
brother,  fault  or  no  fault,  and  the  judgment  I  form  of  him  shall 
be  formed  in  the  spirit  of  love,"  I  would  place  no  confidence 
in  the  history  of  a  country  written  by  a  man  who  was  prej- 
udiced against  that  country.  I  would  feel  none  in  the  opin- 
ion of  one  sect  respecting  another  sect  to  which  it  is  ojjposed. 
Judgments  formed  in  a  spirit  of  love  are  worth  something ; 
but  so  long  as  a  man  is  under  the  influence  of  an  envious, 
hating,  revengeful  spirit,  he  is  unfit  to  sit  on  a  jury,  and  he  is 
certainly  disqualified  to  sit  on  the  bench  to  form  judgments 
about  his  fellow-men. 

Though  men  are  much  worse  than  we  think  they  are,  yet 
they  are  a  great  deal  better  than  we  think  they  are.  Meas- 
ured by  that  standard  which  God  has  given  us,  how  wretch- 
ed they  are  !  but  measured  by  the  ordinary  standards  which 
the  world  has  set  up,  there  are  more  good  things  about 
them  than  we  are  willing  to  accord  to  them.  We  are  so 
selfish  that  we  do  not  give  them  credit  enough.  We  are 
hard  and  proud.  We  can  not  endure  the  faults  of  men,  and 
be  patient  with  those  faults.  We  act  in  a  spirit  of  intoler- 
ance.    Parents  can  not  endure  the  faults  of  their  children ; 


Love,  the  Fulfilling  of  the  Law.  155 

brothers  and  sisters  can  not  endure  each  othei-'s  faults ; 
teachers  can  not  endure  the  faults  of  their  scholars ;  neigh- 
bors can  not  endure  the  faults  of  neighbors;  workmen  in  the 
same  shop  can  not  endure  one  another's  faults.  Men  can 
not  get  along  peacefully  and  harmoniously  together  ex- 
cept where  there  is  this  diffusive  kmdness  and  benevolence. 
When  we  are  pervaded  with  this,  we  bear  each  other's  bur- 
dens joyfully.  If  you  do  not  love  a  man  you  are  always  ag- 
gravating him  at  a  point  where  he  can  not  bear  temptation ; 
but  if  you  do  love  him,  you  shield  him  from  temptation.  A 
loving  heart  is  God's  shield,  and  it  is  the  best  protection 
that  you  can  throw  about  a  man.  Kindness,  which  is  an- 
other word  for  benevolence,  is  indispensable  to  justice.  Ab- 
solute conscience — conscience  taken  out  of  the  atmosphere 
of  love — is  always  hard,  always  cruel,  always  unjust.  Con- 
science should  never,  for  one  moment,  lose  sight  of  love.  A 
judgment  formed  from  any  standard  except  one  which  meas- 
ures by  sympathetic  benevolence  is  false. 

No  man  can  tell  another  man  his  faults  so  as  to  benefit 
him  unless  he  loves  him.  When  I  hate  a  man  I  am  unfitted 
to  be  a  censor  or  judge.  There  is  always  a  sharjj  edge  to 
one's  manner  when  he  tells  another  his  faults  under  such  cir- 
cumstances. This  infernal  spirit,  that  takes  pleasure  in  the 
faults  of  others,  was  sharply  rebuked  by  Paul  when  he  utter- 
ed the  words  "  Rejoiceth  not  in  iniquity."  There  are  thou- 
sands of  men  that  seem  to  rejoice  in  nothing  else  half  so 
much  as  iniquity.  The  moment  they  hear  the  servant  of  the 
devil  asking,  "  Have  you  heard  the  news  about  A  and  B  ?" 
they  say,  "  What  is  it  ?  Sit  down  and  tell  it  to  me ;"  and  it 
is  so  relishable  to  reveal,  and  so  exquisite  to  hear  that  A  and 
B  have  been  doing  wrong,  and  have  been  found  out  in  that 
wrong,  that  they  fairly  gloat  over  it !  This  is  the  very 
spirit  of  the  devil  himself,  and  it  is  the  spirit  of  human  soci- 
ety to  a  great  extent.  There  is  a  terrible  touch  and  taint 
of  it  in  almost  every  heart.  It  is  hateful  before  God,  and 
should  be  before  men. 


156    Love,  the  Fulfilling-  of  the  Law. 

The  man  who  has  a  true  Christian  spirit  never  takes  de- 
light in  the  faults  of  others.  It  jiains  him  almost  as  much 
to  see  faults  in  others  as  to  perceive  that  he  has  faults  him- 
self Tell  me,  does  it  not  give  you  as  exquisite  pain  to  dis- 
cover faults  in  those  you  love  as  to  discover  them  in  your- 
self? Do  you  not  feel  that  you  would  give  your  own  body 
and  blood  to  save  them  from  ruin  ?  So  ought  you  to  feel  in 
respect  to  all  your  felloAV-men.  Their  burdens  sliould  be 
your  burdens,  and  their  sorrows  your  sorrows.  When  a  man 
is  actuated  by  this  spirit,  how  easy  it  is  for  him  to  go  to  oth- 
ers and  tell  them  kindly  of  their  faults,  and  help  them  to  rid 
themselves  of  them !  Men  usually  Avill  bear  to  be  told  their 
faults  by  a  person  who  has  this  disposition,  but  never  by  a 
person  who  has  it  not. 

And  that  which  is  true  in  the  family  and  among  men  in 
the  world,  on  this  point,  is  true  in  the  pulpit.  I  think  there 
is  no  question  but  that  a  minister  may  speak  what  he  thinks 
it  is  necessary  to  speak.  The  question  is,  Can  he  love  enough 
to  be  a  faithful  speaker  ?  A  man  who,  hating  sin,  is  always 
thinking  how  hateful  it  is,  is  not  well  adapted  to  benefit 
those  who  are  sinful  by  preaching  to  them  against  it.  We 
are  commanded  to  abhor  that  which  is  evil,  but  that  is  not 
the  whole  nor  the  half  of  it.  We  are  not  only  to  abhor  that 
which  is  evil,  but  we  are  to  love  our  fellow-men ;  and  a  min- 
ister must  not  only  abhor  evil,  but  he  must  love  his  people, 
so  that  when  he  thunders  to  them  disagreeable  truths  from 
the  pulpit,  he  will  leave  the  impression  on  their  mind  that 
he  does  it  because  he  loves  them,  that  he  sympathizes  with 
them,  desires  to  do  them  good,  and  is  willing,  if  need  be,  to 
suffer  for  them.  Let  him  do  this,  and  he  can  say  any  thing 
to  them  that  needs  to  be  said.  I  do  not  wonder  that  men 
do  not  want  a  minister  to  preach  disagreeable  truths  to  them 
out  of  a  heart  of  coldness,  or  even  of  judicial  jDurity.  But 
let  him  talk  to  them  in  a  spirit  of  love,  and  they  will  bear  a 
great  deal  of  hard  speaking  from  him.  If  a  man  has  not  this 
spirit,  he  had  better  not  be  a  public  teacher,  for  it  is  this 


Love,  the  Fulfilling  of  the  Law.  157 

alone  that  can  give  him.  that  divine  power  of  sympathy 
which  he  needs  to  have  for  his  sinful  fellow-men. 

I  will  say,  farther,  that  the  disposition  of  love  is  to  be  the 
stand-point  from  which  we  are  to  judge  whether  or  not  we 
possess  the  Christian  graces.  In  other  words,  love  is  the 
true  and  only  evidence  of  piety.  There  are  thousands  of 
persons  who  long  to  know  whether  they  are  Christians  or 
not.  They  review  their  past  experience,  and  say,  "I  was 
awakened  on  such  a  day.  I  had  a  sense  of  the  law  of  God, 
and  of  my  own  sinfulness  under  that  law.  I  was  in  great  and 
dreadful  darkness,  and  suddenly  there  came  to  me  a  revela- 
tion of  Christ,  and  I  comprehended  him  by  faith,  and  accept- 
ed him  as  my  Savior.  Prayer  and  the  Bible  became  pleas- 
ant to  me,  and  I  loved  to  worship.  I  soon  joined  the  Church, 
and  since  then  I  have  tried  to  lead  a  life  consistent  with  my 
profession."  They  were  awakened,  their  conversion  was  a 
real  one,  as  they  thmk,  they  put  their  trust  in  Christ,  they 
joined  the  Church,  and  now  they  say  their  prayers,  and  read 
the  Bible,  and  are  trying  to  keep  Sunday — all  of  which 
things  are  right  and  proper.  But  if  these  are  their  only  evi- 
dences of  piety,  they  have  only  the  shell,  and  lack  the  cen- 
tral element  of  Christian  life.  I  hear  not  a  word  about  your 
having  the  disposition  of  love.  Have  you  that  ?  Do  your 
father  and  mother  say  of  you,  "  This  child,  that  used  to  be  so 
wayward  and  ill-tempered,  is  now  well-behaved  and  gentle  ?" 
Were  you  accustomed  to  take  advantage  of  your  brothers  and 
sisters,  and  to  clutch  from  them  whatever  you  could  ?  and 
do  they  say  of  you, "  Since  my  brother  and  sister  have  joined 
the  Church,  they  are  changed  in  disposition  from  their  old 
selves.  Then  they  were  disobliging  and  selfish,  but  now  they 
are  kind  and  generous,  and  manifest  a  loving  spirit  ?"  Do 
your  tenants  say, "  I  should  have  knoAvn  that  he  had  become 
a  Christian  by  the  way  he  collects  his  rents?"  Do  your 
business  associates  and  your  neighbors  say,  "How  much 
more  fair  and  just  he  is  in  his  dealings  than  he  used  to  be  ?" 
Is  your  nature,  that  was  once  as  hard  as  a  granite  rock,  now 


158  Love,  the  Fulfilling  of  the  Law. 

soft  and  mossy  on  the  surface,  so  that  vegetation  might  al- 
most grow  upon  it  ?  It  is  your  life  that  is  to  determine 
whether  you  have  the  spirit  of  Christ,  and  if  you  have  not 
the  spirit  of  Christ  you  are  none  of  his.  Though  you  have 
passed  through  hell  and  heaven ;  though  you  have  been  at- 
tended by  angels  in  long  processions  every  day  since  you 
heard  of  God ;  though  you  have  the  gift  of  prophecy,  and  un- 
derstand all  knowledge ;  though  you  have  all  faith,  so  that 
you  could  remove  mountains — if  you  have  not  love,  these 
things  profit  you  nothing.  When  you  wish  to  know  whether 
you  are  a  Christian  or  not,  you  must  look  for  evidence  of  your 
piety  in  other  things  besides  the  observance  of  ecclesiastical 
requirements.  I  would  not  undervalue  these,  but  when  you 
substitute  them  for  inward  jiurity  I  must  apprise  you  of  your 
mistake,  for  your  soul  is  in  peril.  If  you  wish  to  know  wheth- 
er you  are  a  Christian  or  not,  ask  yourself,  "  "What  is  the  na- 
ture of  my  daily  conduct  ?  What  do  my  neighbors  say  of 
the  change  that  has  been  wrought  in  me  ?"  Ask  your  father 
and  mother,  "  Do  you  think  I  am  living  in  a  spirit  of  love  ?" 
Ask  your  companions  —  who  know  your  disposition  better 
than  you  know  it  yourself — if  they  think  you  have  changed 
for  the  better.  Ask  your  hired  man,  ask  your  servants, 
"  Do  I  fret  as  much  as  I  used  to  ?  Am  I  as  morose  as  I  was  ? 
Do  I  make  you  as  unhappy  as  I  did  ?"  Look  about  you  and 
see  what  the  fruits  of  your  life  are.  If  you  want  to  know 
whether  there  are  chestnuts  on  a  tree  or  not,  you  look  on  the 
ground,  and  if  you  find  any  there,  you  know  that  there  are 
more  where  they  came  from.  Go  and  see  where  the  fruit  of 
your  Christianity  is.  It  is  not  in  your  hymns — any  body 
can  sing  hymns;  it  is  not  in  your  prayers — any  man  can 
make  prayers ;  it  is  not  in  your  hope — who  has  not  a  hope 
of  one  sort  or  another  ?  Neither  is  it  in  a  mere  profession. 
If  you  are  a  Christian,  it  is  because  the  grace  of  God  is  given 
you  by  the  Holy  Ghost  in  the  form  of  love,  which  works  in 
both  directions — Godward  and  manward.  Without  this  love 
nobody  can  be  a  Christian.    To  find  out  whether  you  have  it 


Love,  the  Fulfilling  of  the  Law.  159 

or  not,  you  must  look  into  your  life,  you  must  examine  your 
conduct,  saying  to  yourself,  "  Is  my  temper  milder  than  it 
used  to  be  ?  Am  I  more  patient  and  gentle  than  I  was  ?  Do 
I  throw  the  mantle  of  charity  over  the  faults  of  others  ?  Do 
I  produce  the  fruit  of  love  ?  Do  I  seek  others'  good,  not  my 
own — others'  happiness,  not  solely  my  own  ?  Am  I  willing 
to  deny  myself  for  the  sake  of  making  others  better  and  hap- 
pier ?  And  has  this  tendency  become  a  disposition  ?"  If  you 
can  give  an  affirmative  answer  to  these  questions,  you  have 
some  of  the  most  important  evidences  that  the  love  of  God 
is  increasing  and  abiding  in  you. 

Let  me  say  here  that  I  hold  the  want  of  this  central  ele- 
ment of  Christian  love  to  be  the  grand  reason  of  the  skejDti- 
cism  and  infidelity  which  exist  in  our  time.  Suppose  I  should 
attempt  to  persuade  a  nation  that  our  Indian  corn  was  excel- 
lent for  food  by  ofiering  them  the  cob  and  husk  without  the 
grain  ?  I  might  insist  as  strongly  as  I  pleased  that  it  was 
full  of  nutriment ;  but  after  they  had  partaken  of  the  cob 
and  husk,  supposing  them  to  be  the  corn,  they  would  declare 
corn  to  be  innutritious.  Now  what  an  ear  of  corn  is  with- 
out the  grain,  that  Christianity  is  without  kind,  genial,  sym- 
pathetic love.  Christianity  with  this  love  left  out  is  nothing 
but  cob  and  husk.  When  the  corn  is  growing,  the  cob  serves 
a  good  purpose  as  a  centre  for  the  grain  to  form  itself  upon, 
and  the  husk  is  a  grand  wrapper  for  protecting  it  from  the 
weather  while  it  is  yet  tender.  I  do  not,  therefore,  speak 
against  the  cob  or  the  husk.  I  regard  them  as  important  in- 
side and  outside  influences,  provided  for  the  ripening  of  the 
corn.  I  do  not  speak  against  churches,  and  "  means  of  grace," 
and  religious  institutions,  but  I  do  say  that  churches,  and 
means  of  grace,  and  religious  institutions,  which  do  not  pro- 
duce love,  are  mere  cob  and  husk.  True  Christian  love  is  the 
grain.  That  is  to  be  the  bread  of  life.  It  is  that  which  is  to 
transform  man,  and  lead  him,  in  his  treatment  of  his  fellow- 
men,  to  imitate  him  who  bowed  his  majesty,  and  laid  his  head 


160  Love,  the  Fulfilling  of  the  Law. 

in  the  grave,  giving  his  life  to  show  his  love  for  us,  and  to 
rescue  us  from  eternal  death. 

Where  there  is  this  spirit,  it  is  so  lovely  that  nobody- 
wants  to  doubt  its  reality.  Where  true  religion  exists,  no- 
body wants  to  be  an  infidel.  This  Christian  disposition  kills 
infidelity.  Nobody  wants  to  doubt  the  reality  of  God's  love  in 
the  human  soul.  I  would  rather  have  one  rejDresentative  of 
Christianity  to  cure  infidelity  withal  than  five  thousand  tracts. 
Religion  is  the  best  cure  for  the  doubt  of  religion.  The  real- 
ity is  the  best  cure  for  the  disbelief  of  it.  When  ministers, 
and  elders,  and  members  of  the  Church,  instead  of  loving  each 
other,  are  seen  wrangling,  and  quarreling,  and  railing  at  one 
another ;  when  they  exhibit  natures  as  full  of  selfish  passions 
as  a  sepulchre  is  of  dust  and  vermm,  it  is  not  to  be  Avondered 
at  that  skepticism  and  infidelity  are  rife  among  us,  and  that 
men  say,  "  I  do  not  want  such  a  religion  as  that."  Ah  !  it  is 
not  religion,  but  the  want  of  it,  that  makes  infidels.  And 
when  there  is  a  real  revival  in  the  Church,  and  Christians 
begin  to  settle  their  difierences,  and  to  show  kind  feeling  to- 
ward each  other,  and  to  do  things  which  it  is  hard  for  the 
natural  man  to  do ;  when  this  transcendent  power  of  love 
begins  to  manifest  itself  in  their  lives,  then  people  are  afiect- 
ed,  and  say, "There  is  something  in  religion,  after  all." 

I  would  give  more  for  one  poor  woman,  whose  poverty 
only  makes  her  laugh  and  sing ;  who  is  contented  with  her 
humble  lot ;  who  bears  her  burdens  with  cheerfulness ;  who  is 
patient  when  troubles  come  upon  her ;  who  loves  every  one, 
and  who,  with  a  kind  and  genial  spirit,  goes  about  doing 
good,  than  for  all  the  dissertations  on  the  doctrines  of  Chris- 
tianity that  could  be  written,  as  a  means  of  preventing  infi- 
delity. I  have  seen  one  such  woman,  who  was  worth  more 
than  the  whole  church  to  which  she  belonged  and  its  minis- 
ter put  together ;  and  1  was  the  minister,  and  my  church 
was  the  church !  She  lived  over  a  cooper-shop.  The  floor 
of  her  apartment  was  so  rude  and  open  that  you  could  sit 
there  and  see  what  the  men  were  tloing  below.     She  had  a 


Love,  the  Fulfilling  of  the  Law.         161 

sort  of  fiend  for  a  husband — a  rough,  brutal  shipmaster.  She 
was  universally  called  "Mother."  She  literally,  night  and 
day,  went  about  doing  good.  I  do  not  suppose  all  the  min- 
isters in  the  town  where  she  lived  carried  consolation  to  so 
many  hearts  as  she  did.  If  a  person  was  sick  or  dying,  the 
people  in  the  neighborhood  did  not  think  of  sending  for  any 
one  else  half  so  soon  as  for  her.  I  tell  you,  there  was  not 
much  chance  for  an  infidel  to  make  headway  there.  If  I 
wanted  to  convince  a  man  of  the  reality  of  Christianity,  I 
said  nothing  about  historic  evidence ;  I  said,  "  Don't  you  be- 
lieve Mother  is  a  Christian?"  and  that  would  silence 

him.  Where  there  is  a  whole  church  made  up  of  such  Chris- 
tians as  she  was,  infidelity  can  not  thrive.  You  need  not  be 
afraid  of  its  making  its  way  into  such  a  chui'ch.  The  Word 
of  God  stands  sure  under  such  circumstances,  so  that  nothing 
can  successfully  rise  against  it. 

And  now  let  me  say  two  or  three  closing  words  to  an- 
other part  of  my  audience :  Many  of  you  who  have  been 
spectators  have  rejoiced  to  hear  a  man  talk  to  churches  and 
to  ministers,  and  tell  them  their  faults.  To  some  of  the  se- 
verer things  I  have  spoken  you  have  said  "  Amen."  When 
I  alluded  to  the  inconsistencies  of  many  professed  Christians, 
you  said,  "I  know  that  is  so."  Now  you  believe  in  this 
good-nature,  this  genial  benevolence,  this  large-hearted  gen- 
erosity, this  true  love,  do  you  not  ?  Well,  do  you  possess  it 
yourself?  Would  you  dare  to  let  this  question  be  settled  by 
a  jury  gathered  from  among  those  who  know  you  best? 
Are  you  living  in  a  state  of  grace,  or  a  state  of  love,  which  is 
the  same  thing  ?  You  say, "  Of  course  I  do  not  love  as  I 
ought  to,  but  then  I  am  not  a  professor  of  religion."  Wheth- 
er you  are  a  professor  of  religion  or  not  has  nothing  to  do 
with  your  duty,  I  am  not  bound  to  live  better  than  you  sim- 
ply because  I  am  a  professor  of  religion  and  you  are  not,  God 
requires  me  to  do  that  which  is  just  and  right.  My  obliga- 
tions are  not  to  the  Church,  but  to  God  Almighty,  and  it  is 
the  same  with  you.     The  responsibility  of  right  conduct  is 

n.— L 


162  Love,  the  Fulfilling  of  the  Law. 

placed  upon  every  man,  whether  he  is  in  the  Church  or  out  of 
it.  There  is  not  a  man  in  this  house  that  is  not  bound  to 
exemplify  this  doctrine  of  sympathetic  love  in  his  daily  life. 
Have  you  this  love  ?  "  Well,"  you  say, "  not  so  much  of  it  as 
I  ought  to  have."  But  have  you  it  at  all  ?  Do  you  attempt 
to  liv^e  by  it?  God  makes  it  the  indisjiensabie  duty  of  every 
living  creature  to  possess  and  exercise  this  disposition ;  and 
if  you  go  on,  from  day  to  day,  without  manifesting  in  your 
conduct  either  love  to  God  or  love  to  man,  you  are  living  in 
a  state  of  sin,  and  need  to  be  converted.  "  But,"  you  say,  "  I 
do  not  believe  in  conversion."  You  believe  a  man  ought  to 
live  as  well  as  he  can,  do  you  not?  Every  body  believes  that. 
Well,  go  and  live  in  this  state  of  love.  Either  you  will  or 
you  will  not.  If  you  do  not,  do  you  not  need  conversion? 
If  you  try  for  the  next  month,  and  the  next  year,  to  live 
right,  and  do  not  succeed,  does  not  that  show  that  you  need 
some  higher  power  to  help  you  than  exists  in  yourself?  Or, 
if  you  should  go  out,  and  from  this  moment  live  a  Christian 
life,  and  exhibit  a  loving  disposition,  would  not  all  your  neigh- 
bors and  acquaintances  look  at  you  and  say, "  What  has  hap- 
pened to  that  man  ?"  If,  to-morrow  morning,  when  you  go 
about  your  business,  you  should  leave  behind  you  all  your 
pride  and  self-interest,  and  should  show  toward  every  one 
you  meet  a  genial  good -nature,  would  not  men  exclaim, 
"What  has  happened  to  our  old  acquaintance?"  In  other 
words,  if  you  should  live  in  a  spirit  of  love  to  God  and  love 
to  man,  would  not  every  body  say  of  you,  "  Why,  he  is  con- 
verted ?"  Although  you  may  not  believe  in  conversion,  if 
you  live  in  the  spirit  of  love,  you  are  converted.  If  you  do 
not  live  in  that  sj^irit,  you  are  not  converted,  but  you  need  to 
be.  When  you  are  converted,  you  will  come  to  believe  in  the 
doctrine  that  there  is  a  work  to  be  done  in  man's  carnal  na- 
ture, by  no  less  a  power  than  that  of  God's  Sjiirit,  before  he 
can  arrive  at  a  state  of  disinterested  benevolence. 

There  is  not  a  daisy  that  was  not  organized  to  be  a  daisy, 
but  I  should  like  to  see  one  that  did  not  have  the  sun  to 


Love,  the  Fulfilling  of  the  Law.         163 

help  it  up  from  the  seed  !  there  is  not  an  aster  that  was  not 
organized  to  be  an  aster,  hut  where  is  there  one  that  grew 
independent  of  the  sun !  What  the  sun  is  to  flowers,  that 
the  Holy  Ghost  must  be  to  our  hearts,  if  we  would  be  Chris- 
tians. If  there  is  a  man  who  can  be  a  Christian  without 
the  help  of  God,  he  has  a  heart  such  as  I  never  knew  a  per- 
son to  have.  I  never  seek  to  put  down  wicked  thoughts 
and  incite  good  ones  without  feeling  that  if  God  does  not 
help  me  I  shall  not  succeed.  And  here  we  come  to  the  very 
bosom  of  the  truth  I  am  enforcing ;  for  what  God  commands 
us  to  be,  that  he  is  himself;  and  when  we  need  help  in  our 
Christian  course,  he  stands  ready,  of  all  others,  to  help  us, 
working  in  us  both  to  will  and  to  do  of  his  good  pleasure. 

Now,  without  wishing  to  deal  in  mysticism  or  metaphysic- 
al arguments,  I  have  endeavored  to  set  before  you  the  cen- 
tral duty  of  your  life  —  the  marrow  of  Christian  living. 
Some  of  you  I  may  never  see  again.  In  the  providence  of 
God,  my  residence,  at  some  seasons,  will  be  near  you,  and  I 
hope  to  see  you  often ;  but  there  may  be  some  before  me 
whom  I  shall  never  meet  again  till  the  judgment  day.  I 
would  not  speak  words  to  gratify  your  curiosity — I  would  ut- 
ter words  that  shall  take  hold  of  the  very  centre  of  your  life, 
and  prepare  you,  with  me,  to  meet  our  God.  And  if,  by-and- 
by,  when  I  stand  before  my  Master,  to  render  an  account  of 
my  stewardship,  you  stand  awe-stricken  by  my  side,  and 
without  God  and  hope  in  that  tremendous  hour,  oh  !  let  my 
skirts  be  cleai'ed  of  your  guilt !  I  tell  you  that  unless  you  are 
born  into  Christian  love,  you  can  not  see  the  kingdom  of  God. 
There  is  grace  to  enable  us  to  love  every  one,  and  without 
that  grace  no  man  shall  see  the  Lord.  Therefore  I  appeal  to 
you,  my  brethren,  my  friends,  deai-ly  beloved,  though  stran- 
gers in  the  flesh — I  appeal  to  you  to  heed  the  commandments 
of  God,  and  when  Christ  says,  "  Thou  shalt  love  the  Lord  thy 
God  with  all  thy  heart,  and  with  all  thy  soul,  and  Avith  all 
thy  mind,  and  with  all  thy  strength,  and  thy  neighbor  as 
thyself,"  believe  and  obey  those  words.     Bind  them  about 


164  Love,  the  Fulfilling  of  the  Law. 

the  brow  of  your  memory ;  live  in  their  sacred  iDresence ;  let 
them  imbue  your  soul  with  their  hidden  meaning ;  and  so, 
living  in  love,  as  its  very  child  and  ward,  at  last  you  shall 
rise  into  that  sphere  where  love  shall  be  perfected,  purified, 
and  perpetual ! 


VII. 

^rtotljtiig  Sbbm  Cjirist  nnJi  36ini  Crntilifii. 


Preached  in  Plymouth  Church,  Brooklyn,  Sabbath  morning, 
September  22d,  1861. 


Peeaching  Christ. 


"And  I,  brethren,  when  I  came  to  you,  came  not  with  excellency  of  speech 
or  of  wisdom,  declaring  unto  you  the  testimony  of  God.  For  I  deter- 
mined not  to  know  any  thing  among  you  save  Jesus  Christ,  and  him 
crucified." — 1  Cor.,  ii.,  1,  2. 

The  great  men  of  the  world  are  those  who  discover  or  ap- 
ply great  truths  to  the  times  in  which  they  live,  in  such  a 
manner  as  to  work  effectual  reformations  of  society,  A  man 
is  great,  not  by  the  measure  of  his  faculty,  but  by  the  results 
which  he  produces  in  life.  Paul  was,  then,  one  of  the  great- 
est. He  was  greater  than  Peter,  than  John,  than  any  since 
the  days  of  Moses.  Moses  and  Paul  may  be  said  to  have 
formed  the  religious  ages  of  the  old  and  of  the  new  dispensa- 
tions. Moses  framed  the  civil  and  ethical  truths  into  insti- 
tutions. David  added  the  poetic  and  lyric  element.  Paul 
gave  to  his  age  the  great  organizing  truths,  and  furnished  in 
his  own  conduct  an  example  of  how  to  employ  them.  John 
added  the  interior  reflective,  sentimental  element.  And  so 
John  was  to  Paul  what  David  was  to  Moses. 

It  is  more  than  a  matter  of  curiosity,  when  a  man  has 
been  raised  up  of  God  to  do  great  things,  to  have  him  give 
a  view  of  his  own  life,  its  aims  and  methods.  Paul  here 
sounds  the  key-note  of  his  life  and  course.  "  I,  brethren, 
when  I  came  to  you  (he  had  been  with  them,  and  gone  away 
again ;  and  now  he  was  writing  in  retrospect,  and  disclosing 
what  was  the  secret  of  his  career),  came  not  with  excellency 
of  speech  (with  rhetorical  power,  and  force  of  eloquence), 
or  of  wisdom  (I  was  not  a  dialectician,  nor  a  philosopher,  a 
lover  of  learning,  so  called),  declaring  unto  you  the  testimony 


168  Pkeaching  Christ. 

of  God.  For  I  determined  not  to  know  any  thing  among 
you  save  Jesus  Christ,  and  him  crucified."  He  did  not  come 
relying  for  success  uj^on  fancy,  upon  a  sense  of  the  beautiful 
as  employed  in  rhetoric,  nor  upon  intellectual  forces. 

You  will  take  notice,  in  all  the  jDreceding  chapter  and  in 
this,  that  it  is  not  Christ,  hut  Christ  crucified^  Christ  with  his 
cross,  that  was  the  essential  qualifying  particular.  The 
hruised,  the  broken  Christ  was  that  which  he  was  determined 
to  know. 

He  did  not  mean,  then,  to  be  a  skirmisher,  nor  an  elegant 
trifler.  He  did  not  propose  to  be  a  routinist,  either  through 
ceremonies  or  dialectics.  The  work  which  ojiened  before 
the  mind  of  the  apostle  was  so  radical  and  profound  that 
he  was  from  the  beginning  conscious  that  nothing  but  the 
very  influence  of  God  himself,  and  the  infinite  truths  re- 
vealed in  Christ,  could  eflect  it.  He  says,  "  What  I  had  to 
do  could  not  be  done  by  mere  eloquence  and  beauty  of  ex- 
pression. I  might  have  charmed  by  rhetorical  flourishes,  but 
they  would  not  have  changed  the  individual.  I  might  have 
recited  poetry,  but  passion  is  never  extinguished  by  poetry. 
That  which  I  had  before  me  demanded  something  more  than 
mere  reasoning  upon  propositions.  I  could  have  instructed 
the  understanding,  but  that  would  not  have  done  the  work 
that  I  was  sent  to  do,  namely,  the  work  of  changing  the 
heart."  For  it  was  his  business  to  work  a  thorough  change 
of  disjDOsition,  of  life,  and  of  character  in  the  individual  men 
that  came  under  his  influence.  And  it  was  his  purpose,  pro- 
phetically discerned,  no  doubt,  in  families  and  neighborhoods 
to  lay  the  foundation  for  the  renovation  of  society  itself,  so 
that  all  the  institutions  of  the  world  should  at  last  come  to 
stand  upon  new  and  religious  bases.  "What  could  be  greater 
than  this  work  ?  It  was  to  be  done,  not  by  intellectual  force, 
by  i^hilosophy,  by  doctrine,  by  right  statements  of  facts  or 
reasonings,  by  the  play  of  fancy,  nor  by  any  amusements  or 
tragic  representations. 

Many  things  were  going  on  in  the  age  of  the  apostle  for 


Preaching  Christ.  169 

the  renovation,  or  rather  the  restraint  of  men's  passions.  It 
is  not  correct  to  suppose  that  only  after  Christ  came  was  any 
attempt  made  to  benefit  men.  Great  efforts  for  the  right 
culture  of  men  were  made  before  the  Advent.  But  it  was  a 
work  imperfectly  understood — that  society,  that  classes  of 
men  were  to  be  educated.  Even  in  Grecian  cities  there  was 
some  good.  In  the  school  of  philosophy,  and  in  the  various 
other  schools,  there  were  noble  natures  that  were  laboring 
for  the  elevation  of  men.  Even  in  the  Epicurean — which  is 
esteemed  the  lowest — there  were  elements  that  yearned  after 
and  pointed  toward  goodness.  The  Sophists  were  not  whol- 
ly foolish  and  trivial.  There  were  many  things,  also,  on  the 
stage  and  in  scenic  representations  that  sought  to  do  good. 
In  barbaric  ages,  when  men  learn  mostly  through  the  senses, 
even  the  stage  may  conduce  to  good  morals;  but  society 
must  be  very  low  where  the  theatre  can  be  made  effectual 
for  its  elevation. 

And  so,  in  the  days  of  the  apostle,  there  were  men  that  sat- 
irized vices,  and  represented  evil  in  its  hideous  guises.  There 
were  the  temples  of  the  various  deities,  and  the  various  ob- 
servances of  religion,  which,  though  they  may  have  sprung 
from  wrong  notions  of  God,  and  though  they  were  utterly  in- 
adequate as  a  religious  system,  were  of  some  benefit ;  for  he 
must  be  bold  and  ignorant  who  would  say  that  all  these 
things  had  no  benefits  in  them.  But  yet  bolder  and  more  ig- 
norant must  he  be  who  would  say  that  Sophists,  the  drama, 
and  the  heathen  ceremonials  were  sufficient  to  lift  men  above 
their  passions,  exalt  nations,  and  to  do  that  for  civilization 
which  has  been  done  by  Christianity. 

Paul  set  himself  free  from  all  these  things,  and  declared 
what  was  the  power  by  which  he  hoped  to  achieve  his  work. 
He  did  not  declare  that  he  meant  to  exclude  from  considera- 
tion every  thing  that  related  to  secular  topics.  His  declara- 
tion had  nothing  to  do  with  the  tojncs  on  which  he  would 
speak.  His  whole  course  negatives  the  idea  that  he  meant 
to  preach  on  no  other  subject  except  Christ  and  him  cruci- 


170  Pee  ACHING  Christ. 

fied ;  for  there  never  was  a  man  that  discoursed  on  a  great- 
er variety  of  toj^ics  than  he  did.  Many  persons  suppose  that 
this  was  the  spirit  of  the  declaration :  "  When  I  came  among 
you,  I  determined  to  speak  about  the  Lord  Jesus  Christ  in 
every  sermon,  on  every  occasion,  ahvays  and  every  where." 
Many  persons  have  attempted  to  copy  this  misinterpreted 
example  of  the  apostle.  It  is  recounted  by  a  distinguished 
preacher  that  his  mother  made  him  promise  that  he  would 
never  preach  a  sermon  from  which  a  soul,  that  never  was  to 
hear  another  sermon,  could  not  derive  an  idea  of  the  plan 
of  salvation  by  Jesus  Christ.  I  can  scarcely  conceive  any 
thing  more  shallow  than  to  tie  a  man  up  to  such  an  idea 
of  preaching  that  in  every  sermon,  whether  it  be  on  pro- 
fane swearing,  Sabbath-breaking,  or  neglect  in  paying  debts, 
he  must,  at  the  close,  drag  in  a  formula  of  salvation  by  Je- 
sus Christ.  What  a  conception  of  religious  instruction  is 
that  which  leads  one  to  supj^ose  that  every  sermon  should 
have  such  a  termination !  It  has  no  justification  in  any  thing 
that  the  apostle  here  says. 

The  declaration  is  only  a  comprehensive  renunciation  of 
secular  interests  and  influences  as  instrumentalities,  or  as 
working  powers.  When  a  man  goes  into  a  community  to 
work,  he  instinctively  says,  "  How  shall  I  reach  these  men  ? 
What  things  will  I  employ  for  their  renovation?  What 
are  the  sources  of  poAver  from  which  I  will  draw  my  influ- 
ence ?"  The  apostle  says,  "  After  looking  over  the  whole 
field,  I  made  up  my  mind  that  in  attempting  the  renova- 
tion of  men  I  would  not  rely  on  my  power  as  a  speaker,  nor 
upon  my  ability  to  discourse  rhetorically  or  eloquently,  nor 
upon  my  intellectual  forces."  This  had  been  done  by  many 
a  man  with  great  cogency.  Grecian  philosophers  had  spoken 
against  vices.  Thinkers,  and  men  of  wisdom  in  every  age, 
had  labored  to  suppress  evil.  And  Paul,  looking  at  such 
men  as  Socrates  and  Plato,  said,  "  I  meant,  like  them,  to  em- 
ploy the  soundest  logic  of  which  I  was  capable ;  I  meant  to 
make  the  best  use  of  my  reasoning  power;  but  I  did  not 


Preaching  Christ.  171 

mean  to  rely  upon  these  for  success.  Human  nature  is  such 
that  something  is  needed  to  change  the  heart ;  and  I  deter- 
mined that,  while  I  would  use  fancy,  and  reason,  and  every 
other  instrumentality  that  presented  itself,  I  would  go  high- 
er than  fancy,  and  behind  reason,  and  come  to  the  moral  na- 
ture. I  determined  that  I  would  rely  upon  my  power  to 
evoke  from  the  bosom  of  God  eternal  truths,  and  ujjon  the 
presentation  of  God's  nature  and  God's  government  as  mani- 
fested particularly  through  the  Lord  Jesus  Christ  as  a  sacri- 
fice for  sinners.  By  these  I  meant  to  get  a  hold  upon  men's 
conscience,  afiections,  and  life." 

A  warrior,  walking  through  his  magazine,  says, "  I  am  go- 
ing out  to  battle,  and  I  will  select  the  weapons  on  which 
I  mean  to  rely."  He  passes  by  his  bow  and  arrows,  and 
says, "  I  do  not  intend  to  rely  on  them  for  the  fighting  of 
this  battle."  He  comes  to  the  department  of  his  old-fash- 
ioned armor,  and  sees  swords,  and  spears,  and  things  like 
these,  and  says,  "  They  were  good  in  their  time  and  way,  but 
I  do  not  intend  to  rely  upon  them  either."  When  he  gets  to 
the  place  where  he  keeps  the  best  instruments  of  modern 
warfare,  he  says,  "  Here  are  the  things  that  I  mean  to  de- 
pend upon." 

It  did  not  enter  into  his  contemplation  that  he  would  not 
preach  about  war  and  peace ;  public  and  private  economy ; 
whatever,  in  brief,  had  reference  to  the  welfare  of  men  indi- 
vidually and  collectively.  Only  this  is  to  be  inferred  from 
his  declaration :  Wliatever  themes  I  discuss,  it  is  upon  the 
supernatural,  divine  power  that  I  rely  for  success. 

This  course  was  a  stepping  out  of  the  approved  method 
of  religious  teaching.  Both  among  Jews  and  Gentiles,  Paul 
was  an  eccentric  man.  He  did  the  thing  that  commended 
itself  to  his  own  judgment,  without  stopping  to  consider 
whether  it  was  customary  or  not.  His  first  thought  was, 
"  What  ought  to  be  done  ?"  and  his  next  thought,  "  What  is 
the  quickest  way  to  do  it  ?"  His  course  was  a  violation  of 
all  the  proprieties  of  religious  custom. 


172  Preaching  Christ. 

But  in  our  clay,  Paul's  very  originality,  and  this  very  dec- 
laration of  his  new  liberty,  have  become  the  standing  author- 
ity for  routine ;  for  conventional  teaching ;  for  a  restriction 
of  liberty  in  the  pulpit.  That  which  was  a  declaration  of 
pulpit  liberty  has  become  a  declaration  of  pulpit  bondage. 
It  is  the  impression  of  large  classes  of  men — some  of  them 
most  excellent  men — that  the  Sabbath-day  is  too  good  to  be 
spent  in  discussing  any  topics  that  are  not  strictly  religious, 
and  the  church  is  a  place  too  holy  to  be  employed  for  sj^eak- 
ing  upon  any  thing  except  religious  doctrines  and  technical- 
ly Gospel  truths.  The  introduction  into  the  pulpit  of  what 
are  called  secular  subjects  is  not  considered  to  be  in  conso- 
nance with  the  "Word  of  God,  or  the  example  of  Christ,  or 
the  declaration  of  the  apostle,  who  says, "  I  determined  not  to 
know  any  thing  among  you  save  Jesus  Christ,  and  him  cruci- 
fied." Therefore  men  say, "  You  ought  to  jd reach  about  Christ 
more ;  you  ought  to  j)reach  more  about  the  pure  and  peaceful 
precepts  of  the  Redeemer,  and  not  to  agitate  the  congrega- 
tion and  the  community  with  other  toj^ics."  It  is  a  misinter- 
pretation, a  perversion,  a  falsification  of  the  whole  temjDcr  and 
meaning  of  the  language  of  the  apostle,  who  says,  not  this, 
"  I  determined  to  exclude  from  my  preaching  all  things  ex- 
cept those  of  a  religious  nature;"  but  this:  "I  meant  to 
measure  your  thoughts,  your  feelings,  and  your  conduct  by 
eternal  truth — by  the  higher  law.  I  meant,  when  I  came  to 
you,  to  measure  your  ways  and  your  life,  not  by  your  cus- 
toms in  the  street,  in  the  family,  in  the  sect,  and  in  the  syn- 
agogue— not  by  your  old  approved  ways  of  reasoning,  but 
by  this  new  moral  power  of  the  Lord  Jesus  Christ,  broken  for 
the  sins  of  the  world." 

What  a  broad  conception  is  that !  What  a  noble  ofiice 
it  is  to  be  a  preacher,  if  it  is  to  take  the  unsullied  and  eter- 
nal truths  of  God,  and  with  these  to  show  men  the  way  out 
of  dark  places,  and  over  rough  places ;  if  it  is  to  take  the  au- 
thority of  that  which  is  right  and  true,  and  by  it  straighten 
the  crooked  places  in  life !     If  the  pulpit  is  a  place  where 


Preaching  Christ.  173 

men  are  allowed  to  say  what  they  please  within  the  bounds 
of  purity  and  rectitude,  what  a  noble  place  is  the  pulpit ! 
What  sounding  brass  and  tinkling  cymbal  is  that  man  who 
has  to  go  and  ask  those  who  have  preached  before,  and  those 
who  are  about  him,  what  he  may  say !  What  an  empty  place 
is  the  pulpit  if  every  thing  is  excluded  from  it  except  one 
particular  class  of  subjects !  But  what  a  noble  place  is  the 
pulpit,  and  what  a  noble  calling  is  that  of  a  minister,  if  he  is 
a  free  man  in  Christ  Jesus,  and  if  there  he  is  at  liberty  to  say 
any  thing  that  it  is  lawful  to  say  any  where !  If  the  callmg 
of  a  minister  is  such  that  he  can  say,  "My  business  is  to 
make  men  better ;  it  is  my  business,  through  the  individual, 
to  make  the  family,  the  society,  the  nation,  and  the  age  in 
which  I  live  better ;  I  mean  to  take  the  highest  truths,  and 
by  these  bring  a  power  to  bear  on  every  side  of  human  life 
for  the  benefit  of  men" — if  such  is  the  calling  of  a  minister, 
then  it  is  a  magnificent  calling.  He  that  truly  fulfills  such 
a  calling  may  be  said  to  sit  not  far  from  his  place  who  is  de- 
clared to  sit  upon  the  circle  of  the  earth ;  for  he  has  before 
him  all  creation  for  his  book,  all  men  for  his  audience,  and 
the  elements  of  divine  power  for  his  instruments. 

There  are  two  extremes  which  spring  from  the  interpreta- 
tion of  this  passage,  both  of  which  are  full  of  danger.  One 
of  these  is  that  which  I  have  been  speaking  of,  namely,  the 
tendency  of  preaching  to  confine  itself  to  the  unfolding  of 
doctrine  and  precept.  It  is  an  honest  conception  on  the 
part  of  many  conscientious  men  that  nothing  but  precept 
and  doctrine  should  be  proclaimed  from  the  puljDit.  Many 
preachers  tremble  with  the  utmost  sincerity  lest  they  should 
do  wrong  by  introducing  into  their  sermons  matters  of  a  sec- 
ular nature.  And  if  it  were  not  for  their  happy  inconsist- 
ency, their  preaching  would  be  painfully  rigid.  We  pity 
men  on  account  of  their  inconsistencies,  such  is  our  esteem  of 
consistency ;  but  of  the  inconsistencies  of  preachers  like  these 
we  might  almost  say  what  Luther  said  about  our  sins.  In 
view  of  the  revelation  of  redemption,  he  said,  "  Blessed  are 


174  Preaching  Christ. 

our  sins ;"  and  we  may  say, "  Blessed  are  our  inconsistencies." 
By  them  we  get  away  from  our  so-called  wisdom. 

The  idea  of  excluding  from  the  pulpit  every  thing  but  pre- 
cepts and  doctrines,  if  carried  out  in  practice,  besides  making 
preaching  dry,  must  inevitably,  in  the  end,  cause  it  to  address 
itself  only  to  the  intellect.  You  will  find  that  in  the  case  of 
those  who  confine  themselves  really  to  the  promulgation  of 
ideal  religious  truths,  unless  God  has  endowed  them  with  ex- 
traordinary power,  their  preaching  is  peculiarly  dry.  The 
minister  thinks  his  sermons  fail  because  the  people  are  de- 
praved; but  that  is  not  a  justification  of  puljnt  dullness,  nor 
of  didactic  routine,  nor  of  abstract  doctrinal  teaching. 

Now  and  then  there  is  a  man  of  such  genius  that  he  can 
interest  his  hearers,  though  he  confines  himself  to  topics  of  a 
purely  S2:)eculative  nature.  Here  and  there  you  will  find 
some  Bourdaloue,  or  some  Massillon,  that  shall  be  able  to 
make  religious  sentiments,  without  special  applications,  in- 
teresting, and  so  draw  an  audience ;  but  in  determining  the 
rule  in  this  matter,  you  must  not  determine  from  the  few 
men  of  genius  that  the  world  has  produced ;  for  I  aflirm  in 
respect  to  the  men  who  go  forth  to  preach,  that  the  vast  ma- 
jority will  become  uninteresting  if  they  confine  their  preach- 
ing strictly  to  conventional  religious  discourses. 

This  is  already  being  i^roved  true.  The  pulpit  is  relatively 
losing  ground.  You  know,  as  well  as  I,  that  the  Sabbath  day 
does  not  draw  forth  for  religious  worship  the  whole  popula- 
tion, nor  one  quarter  of  it.  I  venture  to  say  that  to-day  there 
are  one  hundred  men  out  of  church  in  these  cities  where  there 
is  one  in  it.  I  can  not  speak  with  exactitude,  but  my  impres- 
sion is  that  the  churches  in  New  York*  and  Brooklyn  will  not 
average  more  than  six  or  eight  hundred  sittings  each.    I  think 

*  In  New  York,  all  churches,  missions,  and  Sabbath-schools,  Protestant 
and  Roman  Catholic,  orthodox  and  imorthodox,  American  and  foreign,  for 
old  and  young,  contain  accommodations  for  300,000  persons,  or  about  one 
third  of  its  entire  population.  The  Protestant  orthodox  churches  and  Sab- 
bath-schools provide  for  about  200,000. 


PLEACHING  Christ.  175 

I  may  say  with  certainty  that  they  will  not  average  over  a 
thousand  each ;  and  I  venture  to  say  that  not  half  of  these  sit- 
tings are  regularly  occupied.  It  is  not  because  there  is  a  want 
of  learning,  nor  because  there  is  a  want  of  sincerity  among 
ministers;  it  is  because  they  are  handcuffed  and  manacled 
with  the  idea  that  on  Sunday  they  must  not  talk  about  any 
thing  but  doctrines  and  religious  truisms.  They  are  afraid 
to  go  beyond  the  opening  up  of  the  nature  of  truth.  So  they 
go  on  preaching  about  truth,  and  about  truth,  and  about  truth, 
and  men  are  tired  of  hearing  about  truth.  Once  in  a  while  a 
man  preaches  about  life^  and  people  flock  to  hear  him,  and 
they  go  away  and  say,  "That  was  a  real  sermon ;  it  followed 
me  all  the  week,  and  I  could  but  think  about  it  at  home,  on 
the  street,  and  in  my  business.  I  rather  longed  to  have  Sun- 
day come  so  that  I  could  go  and  listen  again."  Let  a  man, 
instead  of  preaching  about  truth,  take  truth  as  an  instrument 
by  which  to  preach  about  life,  and  he  will  be  much  more  like- 
ly to  have  hearers,  and  to  influence  them  for  good. 

The  business  of  a  minister  is  what  ?  What  did  Christ  say 
to  those  whom  he  chose  to  be  teachers  of  the  Gospel?  "Fol- 
low me" — and  what  then  ? — "  I  will  make  jou  fishers  of  men.'''' 
Now  a  minister's  business  is  to  catch  men.  We  are  to  catch 
you.  The  hook  by  which  we  catch  you  is  our  sermons. 
That  with  which  we  load  the  hook  is  to  be  the  sui^remest 
truth.  In  judging  of  your  dispositions,  I  do  not  take  the 
tenor  of  men's  public  opinion,  and  measure  you  by  that.  I 
go  back  of  the  voices  of  men,  and  lift  myself  up  into  the  si- 
lence and  secrecy  of  God's  counsels,  and  ask  what  is  right, 
what  is  true,  and  what  is  just,  and,  taking  these,  I  go  down 
to  measure  men  in  their  every -day  lives.  If  I  unfold  the 
truth,  I  am  to  do  it  for  the  sake  of  judging  men,  condemning 
them,  and  recreating  them ;  for  to  be  a  minister  is  to  have 
the  art  of  catching  men  ! 

Many  men  there  are  who  make  fishing-rods  who  never 
themselves  use  them.  To  make  fishing-rods  is  one  thing, 
and  to  catch  fish  is  another.     Many  men  can  make  good 


176  Preaching  Christ. 

lines — silk  lines  and  gut  lines — who  never  think  of  going 
out  themselves  to  catch  fish.  There  are  plenty  of  mechanics 
in  Birmingham  and  Manchester  that  stand  by  the  stithy  and 
make  all  sorts  of  hooks,  who  never  catch  fish.  Many  of  the 
men  that  make  reels  and  baskets  do  not  catch  fish.  The 
man  who,  having  these  things  at  his  command,  knows  w^iere 
the  trout  lie,  and  how  to  throw  his  line,  and  how  to  draw 
back  when  the  fish  rises  to  the  hook — he,  after  all,  is  the  fish- 
erman. 

Now  there  are  hundreds  of  men  who,  when  they  go  into 
the  pulpit,  make  rods,  and  lines  (very  long  lines),  and  hooks, 
and  reels,  and  baskets.  They  take  this  or  that  doctrine,  and 
pound  it  out  into  a  hook,  bending  and  kinking  it  just  so,  and 
stick  it  up  on  a  paper,  and  label  it,  and  that  is  the  end  of  it. 
And  this  is  called  preaching !  To  know  how  to  make  rods, 
and  lines,  and  hooks,  and  reels,  and  baskets,  is  called  sound, 
regular,  and  approved  preaching !  But  Christ  says  that  that 
is  preaching  which  catches  men.  And,  so  far  from  teaching 
you  that  you  have  no  right  to  introduce  into  the  pulpit  any 
thing  but  the  substance  of  doctrines,  I  affirm  that  the  man 
who  does  not  do  it  will  never  catch  men.  God's  sovereign- 
ty may,  out  of  the  literal  foolishness  of  his  preaching,  catch 
some  men ;  but  the  commission  of  Christ  to  every  man  that 
undertakes  to  preach  is,  "  Follow  me,  and  I  will  make  you  a 
fisher  of  men."  The  business  of  a  i^reacher  is  to  catch  men 
— proud  men,  vain  men,  wicked  men,  worldly  men ;  and  to 
catch  them  out  of  temptations,  out  of  snai'es,  out  of  wealth, 
out  of  poverty ;  for  men  are  in  more  pools,  ten  thousand 
times,  than  ever  fishes  are.  And  that  man  who  knows  all 
kinds,  and  what  sort  of  bait  each  loves,  and  how  to  coax  him, 
and  how  to  catch  him,  knows  how  to  preach ;  but  the  man 
who  does  not  know  these  things,  though  he  knows  every 
tiling  else,  lacks  a  knowledge  of  the  very  thing  that  he  was 
sent  to  do. 

The  opinion  that  we  have  no  right  to  preach  any  thing 
except  technical  ideas  must  inevitably  beguile  the  pulpit 


Preaching  Cheist.  177 

to  a  neglect  of  duty  under  a  pretense  of  duty,  and  make 
the  services  merely  academic.  Where  a  man  feels  that  his 
ministerial  duty  is  discharged  when  twice  in  each  of  fifty- 
two  days  of  the  year  he  has  opened  up  some  doctrine  of  faith 
or  practice,  some  ethical  or  intellectual  doctrine ;  where,  in 
other  words,  a  man's  conception  is  limited,  and  where  his 
conscience  rivets  it  upon  him,  it  can  not  but  be  that  in  three 
or  four  years  his  predilections  will  become  simj^ly  academic. 
Within  a  short  period  he  will  have  unfolded  what  he  has 
to  say,  and  that  will  be  the  end  of  him,  so  far  as  original- 
ity is  concerned.  All  that  he  can  do  farther  is  to  vary  the 
thoughts  that  he  has  ah'eady  expressed.  Having  lost  the 
great  source  of  originality,  his  poverty  will  drive  him  into 
rovitine  courses.  But  the  man  who  feels  at  liberty  to  take  up 
human  life — who  feels  that  the  legitimate  topics  of  analysis 
and  discussion  are  the  ten  million  ever-varying  phases  of  ev- 
ery-day  experiences  every  where — that  man  can  not  but  be 
original.  That  is  original  which  strikes  j^at  on  your  experience 
and  upon  your  wants.  There  are  very  few  original  preachers 
in  the  absolute  sense  of  that  term.  The  great  truths  to  be 
preached  are  few,  and  the  variations  that  can  be  made  in 
these  truths  are  few ;  but  the  application  of  truth,  so  as  to 
puncture  vanity,  and  pride,  and  selfishness,  so  as  to  humble 
men  that  are  puffed  up,  and  so  as  to  lift  up  men  that  are  cast 
down,  are  endless.  If  a  man  lives  with  a  constant  eye  upon 
the  condition  of  men,  with  a  constant  sense  of  their  needs, 
and  with  a  constant  knowledge  of  the  means  adapted  to  sup- 
ply those  needs,  he  can  not  grow  shallow  or  get  out  of  top- 
ics. The  field  of  siibjects  for  consideration  is  boundless  in 
extent  and  unlimited  in  variety.  If  a  minister  confines  him- 
self in  his  preaching  to  doctrines,  he  will  become  jejune  by 
routine ;  but  if  he  preaches  doctrines  for  the  sake  of  applying 
them  to  life,  he  will  not. 

Now  I  beseech  of  you  not  to  misconceive  my  idea,  or  to 
suppose  that  I  am  ridiculing  doctrinal  preaching.  It  is  icrong 
doctrinal  preaching  that  I  am  ridiculing.     I  think  it  is  right 

II.— M 


178  Peeaching  Christ. 

to  make  clear  intellectual  statements  in  respect  to  every  part 
of  religion ;  but  that  preaching  which  makes  such  statements 
merely  for  the  sake  of  showing  the  truth  rather  than  of  ap- 
plying the  truth,  is  what  I  call  wrong  doctrinal  preaching ; 
for  every  truth  is  a  sword  of  God,  and  a  right  use  of  it  is  not 
to  make  it  bright,  but  strong  and  sharp  in  the  stroke. 

The  eifect,  I  remark  once  more,  of  the  restriction  of  the 
minister's  duty,  by  confining  his  preaching  to  the  unfolding 
of  j)recept  and  doctrine,  is  to  limit  the  influence  of  the  Church 
and  its  services  to  a  small  part  of  the  mind,  and  to  leave  out 
of  the  ministrations  of  the  Church  that  which  constitutes  the 
conscious  life  of  the  community. 

Do  you  note  our  Lord's  example  in  preaching  ?  Did  expo- 
sitions of  the  Old  Testament  or  disquisitions  upon  the  reign- 
ing themes  of  religion  fill  up  his  discourses  ?  Did  he  consider 
human  afiairs  as  too  vulgar,  and  social  life  too  secular,  and 
the  natural  world  too  unreligious  for  his  sermons  ?  His  ser- 
mons reflect  all  passing  events.  Birds  sang  in  his  discourses ; 
the  grass  grew  in  his  pulpit ;  flowers  blossomed  there !  Now 
the  vineyard  was  his  text;  then  the  husbandman  and  his 
oxen ;  the  steward  and  his  shrewd  calculations ;  the  ex- 
change and  its  coins ;  the  civil  tribunal ;  the  army  and  the 
tax-gatherer ;  the  publican  and  the  courtesan.  He  discoursed 
upon  the  dispositions,  the  thoughts,  the  errors,  the  virtue^, 
the  strifes  or  necessities  of  the  age  in  which  he  lived,  and  of 
the  people  right  before  him.  He  spoke,  too,  about  religious 
things,  not  in  the  sacred  phrase  of  the  temple  and  the  syna- 
gogue, but  in  the  familiar  language  which  men  employ  in 
every-day  life. 

I  remark  again  that  the  notion  that  the  pulpit  must  be  con- 
fined to  the  discussion  of  technically  religious  subjects  implies 
that  a  man's  character  can  be  made  independent  of  his  secular 
life,  and  that  the  Church  is  to  care  only  for  his  religious  part. 
Alas !  that  it  should  be  so ;  but  we  do  separate  our  life  from 
our  religion.  Our  religious  teaching  leads  us  to  do  it.  We 
seem  to  suppose  that  there  is  an  apartment  in  the  mind  into 


Preaching  Christ.  179 

which  God  can  introduce  religion.  We  appear  to  think  that 
though  in  the  other  apartments  are  pride,  and  vanity,  and 
worldliness,  and  secularities  of  every  possible  form,  yet  above 
them  all  is  an  apartment  filled  with  religion.  As  in  a  build- 
ing let  out  with  many  offices  there  may  be  a  pawnbroker  in 
the  basement,  a  lawyer  on  the  ground  floor,  a  purveyor  in  the 
second  story,  and  far  above  them  poor,  people,  so  that  if  a 
philanthropist  goes  to  take  care  of  these  poor  people  he  must 
not  stop  on  the  lower  floors,  but  go  up  where  his  beneficia- 
ries live,  thus  men  seem  to  think  that  a  man  is  built  with 
floors  for  worldliness,  rooms  for  busmess,  apartments  for  pol- 
itics and  traffic,  halls  for  all  sorts  of  trash,  while  in  some 
little  chapel -like  faculty  the  soul  attends  to  worship  and 
religion  generally.  They  suppose  that  there  are  six  days 
to  be  devoted  to  the  world,  which  are  in  no  sense  religious 
days,  and  that  there  is  one  day  which  is  peculiarly  relig- 
ious. And  there  is  one  part  of  the  mind  which  on  that 
day  they  feel  it  their  duty  to  bring  into  exercise,  and  that 
they  want  the  minister  to  play  upon.  On  Sunday  they  ex- 
pect him  to  walk  into  the  attic  of  their  head,  and  teach 
their  moral  sentiments.  If  he  talks  about  other  things 
lower  down,  they  say,  "  Well,  I  should  think  I  had  enough 
of  the  world  in  six  days  of  the  week,  without  having  it 
thrown  into  my  face  on  Sunday."  They  desire  that  the 
seventh  day  shall  be  a  day  in  which  a  man  shall  have  rest 
from  passions;  in  which  his  conscience  shall  not  hunt  him; 
in  which  nothing  shall  disturb  him.  They  say, "  I  have 
wrought  in  the  stithy  and  loom  of  my  nature  all  the  week, 
and  for  one  day  I  want  to  wash  and  go  where  poetry  will 
sing  to  me.  And  I  want  the  minister  to  talk  so  that  I  shall 
have  sweet  dreams,  and  feel  myself  surrounded  by  delightful 
influences."  And  then  what  ?  Why,  on  Monday  they  will 
go  back  to  the  same  things  that  occujjied  them  before  Sun- 
day came,  and  will  follow  them  through  Tuesday,  and  Wed- 
nesday, and  Thursday,  and  Friday,  and  Saturday,  and  then 
withdraw  themselves  from  them  for  a  single  day ;  as  if  of 


180  Peeaching  Christ. 

the  rooms  in  a  man's  nature  one  was  for  organ-playing,  and 
all  the  rest  were  for  worldly  avocations,  restrained  only  by 
the  laws  of  the  land  and  the  customs  of  society. 

To  accept  such  a  view  is  to  demoralize  the  community. 
We  must  teach  the  essential  unity  of  a  man's  character.  We 
must  teach  that  a  man's  religion  is  as  much  a  part  of  his 
woi'k  behind  the  counter,  the  anvil,  or  the  steering-wheel,  as 
in  the  sanctuary  and  before  the  altar.  I  do  not  mean  that 
we  should  accejat  the  idea  that  right  conduct  is  religion.  I 
do  mean,  however,  that  religion  must  have  a  hold  on  right 
conduct ;  I  mean  that  a  man  can  not  be  a  saint  on  Sunday 
and  a  usurer  during  the  week ;  I  mean  that  one  should  have 
his  religious  character  so  symmetrical  that  it  will  still  be 
serving  God  whether  he  is  in  the  shoj),  on  the  farm,  or  in  the 
thunder  of  battle.  Wliether  we  eat,  or  drink,  or  whatsoever 
we  do,  we  must  do  all  to  the  glory  of  God. 

You  can  not  bring  men  to  such  ideas  as  this  unless  your 
teaching  informs  them  how  to  do  the  things  prescribed. 
Suj^pose  I  should  teach  men  that  they  are  profoundly  weak 
and  wicked,  and  bring  them  to  a  conception  of  Christ  as  their 
Savior,  and  educate  them  toward  holiness,  and  insj^ire  their 
imagination  and  understanding  with  an  ideal  of  purity,  till 
such  a  hunger  springs  up  in  them  for  righteousness  that  they 
come  to  me  from  day  to  day  and  ask, "  How  shall  I  make 
my  life  better  ?  What  is  right  in  my  dealings  with  my  fel- 
lows? How  shall  I  perform  my  duty  toward  my  tenants 
or  my  dependents  ?  How  shall  I,  in  the  various  relations  of 
life,  adhere  to  truth  and  justice?" — suppose  I  should  do  these 
things,  and  then  refuse  to  enlighten  them  farther  ?  And  how 
can  I  teach  them  how  to  do  their  duty  in  all  these  relations 
without  discussing  incidents  of  the  family,  of  business,  of  ev- 
ery point  in  life  ?  My  people  go  out  in  the  street,  where 
there  are  wolves  as  well  as  foxes  that  destroy  the  tender 
vines,  and  they  are  sought  after  and  waylaid ;  and  shall  the 
shepherd  refuse  to  explain  to  them  the  nature  of  the  foes  that 


Preaching  Christ.  181 

surround  them  ?  And  how  can  he  explain  without  discours- 
ing upon  worldly  topics  ? 

This  narrow  and  limited  view,  too,  leaves  out  the  design  of 
the  Gospel  to  fashion  civil  society,  and  regards  its  aim  to  he 
exclusively  that  of  saving  men  from  the  perils  of  the  future 
world.  There  are  two  radical  ideas  prevalent  in  the  world 
as  to  the  design  of  religion.  One  school  teaches  that  this 
world  is  a  poor  worn-out  ship,  which  never  can  be  more  than 
patched  up,  and  that  religion,  instead  of  being  a  power  to  re- 
construct the  world,  and  to  bring  it  to  a  perfect  form  before 
the  throne  of  God,  is  a  life-boat  to  get  as  many  as  possible 
off  from  the  old  world  -  ship  before  it  goes  down,  carrying 
with  it  the  remainder.  Many  men  do  not  scruple  to  say, 
"  This  world  will  not  be  much  better,  as  a  whole,  till  Christ 
comes  with  absolute  coercive  power,  like  that  by  which  he 
created  the  world."  Before  that  time  they  do  not  expect 
much  purity  and  holiness  on  earth. 

The  other  theory  teaches  that  while  individual  men  are  be- 
ing saved  by  the  Gospel,  this  is  but  a  j^art  of  a  great  scheme 
by  which  the  world  itself  is  to  be  evangelized,  so  that  this 
world  shall  one  day  stand  before  the  eternal  throne  and  the 
admiring  assembly  of  heaven  a  perfected  civil  society. 

Now  this  second  idea  I  accept  with  all  my  heart.  In  order 
to  bring  it  to  pass,  it  is  the  business  of  teachers  of  religion 
to  touch  all  questions  belonging  to  the  community.  It  is 
their  business  to  make  men  morally  intelligent  of  all  the  af- 
fairs about  them,  and  to  build  them  up  in  a  knowledge  of 
worldly  things  as  judged  from  the  stand- point  of  eternal 
truth  and  right. 

Such  views  as  those  that  I  have  combated  are  peculiarly 
agreeable  to  worldly  men,  and  coincide  with  the  wishes  of  all 
who  have  wrong  deeds  to  cover.  There  are  some  good  men 
whose  prejudices  lead  them  to  desire  to  have  secular  topics 
excluded  fx'om  the  pulpit,  but  there  are  other  men  who  desire 
the  same  thing  because  they  have  sinuous  and  wicked  courses 
that  they  are  afraid  to  have  inveighed  against.     When  the 


182  Pkeaching  Christ. 

vestmented  priest  says,  "  Temperance  and  temperance  socie- 
ties ! — what  has  the  Church  to  do  with  such  things  ?  "We 
are  set  to  preach  the  Gospel,  and  not  ismatical  reformations," 
the  old  man  hears  it  reported  to  him  from  behind  his  barrels, 
himself  as  big  and  robustious  as  they,  and  says,  "  That  is 
the  priest  for  me  who  says, '  Let  reformation  keep  out  of  the 
pulpit.'  "    And  the  debauchee  says  "  Amen." 

You  and  I  were  born  in  a  land  different  in  all  its  polit- 
ical ideas  and  civic  duties  from  any  other  in  the  world. 
It  was  high  treason  to  sjjeak  of  political  affairs  in  Rome, 
and  the  citizens  had  no  business  to  meddle  with  civil  af- 
fairs. But  we  live  in  a  land  where  it  is  not  our  duty  alone, 
but  our  necessity,  to  think  about  these  things.  And  in  the 
performance  of  my  duty,  while,  under  ordinary  circumstances, 
I  am  not  bound  to  teach  you  what  are  the  individual  ele- 
ments of  any  party  manoeuvre — while  I  am  not  bound,  as  a 
general  rule,  to  introduce  the  details  of  politics,  I  am  bound, 
when  any  movement  comes  up  that  involves  a  great  moral 
principle,  to  say, "  Christian  men,  in  these  political  questions 
is  a  moral  question !"  And  that  principle,  and  its  relation  to 
the  Church,  and  the  kingdom  of  Christ  itself,  I  am  bound  to 
point  out  to  you.  Wlien  that  is  done,  those  men  whose  in- 
terest it  is  to  have  the  community  kept  in  ignorance,  that 
they  may  the  better  perpetrate  their  wrong,  are  smitten  to 
the  heart  with  the  thought  that  erratic  clergymen  should 
meddle  with  things  that  do  not  concern  them !  This  is  es- 
pecially the  case  with  regard  to  politics.  But  I  declare  that 
a  minister  who  does  not  know  any  thing  about  politics  has 
no  business  to  teach.  "What  right  has  a  man  to  teach  my 
children  who  does  not  know  his  first  duty  ?  In  a  country 
where  every  citizen  is  called  to  make  magistrates  and  laAvs, 
where  he  must  shape  policies  or  leave  wicked  men  to  do  it — 
under  such  a  government,  if  one  is  bound  more  than  another 
to  be  acquainted  with  public  affairs,  and  to  enlighten  men 
concerning  them,  it  is  the  religious  teacher.  But,  it  is  said, 
ministers  of  religion  are  ignorant  of  jiolitics.    More  the  pity  ! 


Preaching  Christ.  183 

It  is  their  business  to  learn  their  duty !  If  to  pursue  wicked 
ends  by  wicked  courses ;  if  to  take  sides  with  that  which 
gravitates  to  the  earth,  and  against  that  which  aspires  to- 
ward spiritual  ideas ;  if  always  to  be  in  favor  of  that  which 
is  base,  and  opposed  to  that  which  is  noble ;  if  to  avoid  the 
straight  path  of  sincerity,  and  to  stumble  in  the  circuitous 
ways  of  deceit — if  to  do  these  things  is  to  know  politics,  I 
confess  that  I  am  ignorant.  But  if  to  believe  that  there  is 
such  a  thing  as  loving  one's  whole  country ;  if  to  believe  that 
there  is  such  a  duty  as  watching  for  one's  country ;  if  to  be- 
lieve that  oppression  is  hateful,  and  nowhere  else  so  hateful 
as  in  a  Christian  nation  and  in  a  republic — if  to  be  jealous 
of  the  rights  of  the  poor,  to  urge  their  education  and  eleva- 
tion ;  if  to  believe  that  it  is  a  part  of  your  Christian  work,  for 
the  sake  of  your  country,  to  be  true,  and  bold,  and  fearless  in 
season  and  out  of  season — if  to  believe  these  things  is  to  be 
acquainted  with  politics,  then  I  am  informed.  Heretofore 
the  word  politics  has  been  a  stench  and  a  by-word ;  but  there 
ought  to  be  a  public  sentiment  such  that  when  a  man  does 
his  political  duty  to  the  community,  and  the  nation,  and  the 
age  in  which  he  lives,  it  shall  be  esteemed  an  eminent  moral 
excellence,  praiseworthy  and  noble  ! 

Unless  there  is  secular  teaching  in  the  pulpit  there  never 
will  be  constitutional  liberty.  You  know  that  those  times 
in  which  the  pulpit  never  talked  of  any  thing  except  abstract 
truth  were  the  times  when  tyrants  flourished.  When  rulers 
can  keep  a  people  from  taking  part  in  civil  afiairs,  they  have 
a  broad  stithy  and  iron  enough  to  forge  links  of  oppression. 
The  age  in  which  constitutional  liberty  was  born,  in  the  strug- 
gles in  the  IsTetherlands,  and  Holland,  and  Puritan  England, 
was  an  age  in  ivhich  men  preached  about  the  truth  of  God  in 
relation  to  public  and  civil  afiairs.  The  liberties  of  this  people 
were  wrought  out  at  a  time  when  from  every  pulpit  in  the 
land  men,  women,  and  children  were  educated  how  to  be  citi- 
zens ;  and  if  you  lose  your  citizenship,  and  your  Christian  con- 
ception of  it,  it  will  be  because  the  Church  and  the  ministry 


18-i  Pee  ACHING  Christ. 

abandon  their  duty  of  teaching  this  nation  what  are  its  polit- 
ical obligations  as  a  Christian  peojjle.  We  came  near  losing 
our  government.  The  divine  hand  was  outstretched  just  in 
time  to  save  it.  It  had  become  so  seemingly  devoid  of  right 
and  justice  that  a  generation  had  grown  up  dumb,  and  they 
did  not  open  their  mouth  until  they  were  cast  down,  that  the 
devil  might  be  cast  out  of  them. 

I  go  yet  farther,  and  state  that  though  there  has  been  this 
general  conception  that  preaching  was  merely  to  be  a  des- 
canting upon  spiritual  topics,  and  that  it  had  no  particular 
relation  to  a  man's  business  or  outer  life,  yet,  after  all,  there 
has  been  underneath  this  a  conviction  that  it  was  not  so. 
The  idea  has  been  so  impossible  to  be  carried  out  that  it  has 
destroyed  itself. 

You  know  that  I  have  been  with  you  nearly  fourteen  years. 
The  text  from  which  I  have  preached  this  morning  is  the 
text  from  which  I  preached  to  you  on  the  night  when  I  first 
preached  in  the  building  that  then  stood  where  the  lecture- 
room  now  stands.  Fourteen  years  ago  the  coming  October 
I  gave  you  substantially  the  same  view  that  I  have  given 
you  to-day,  namely,  that  a  minister's  duty  is  to  teach  men 
how  to  conform,  not  their  dispositions  alone,  but  their  out- 
ward lives,  to  the  commands  of  Christ  in  his  Gospel.  I  said 
I  would  be  free  to  speak  on  what  I  thought  was  right,  and 
discuss  every  question  that  I  thought  ought  to  be  discuss- 
ed in  the  pulpit,  and  I  have  attempted  to  do  it.  I  am  not 
mentioning  it  to  boast  of  my  fidelity,  for  you  can  not  have 
had  such  withering  conceptions  as  I  have  of  the  incompeten- 
cy of  my  ministry.  I  am  not  proud  of  having  done  much, 
but  I  am  unspeakably  overwhelmed  with  shame  that,  hav- 
ing so  much  truth  on  my  side,  I  have  done  so  little.  And 
yet  I  can  call  you  to  witness  that  I  have  not  used  this 
pulpit  to  preach  things  because  other  ministers  preached 
them,  or  for  the  sake  of  being  at  agreement  with  my  breth- 
ren, I  have  never  preached  a  thing  that  at  the  time  I  did 
not  think  to  be  true ;  and  I  laid  it  down  as  a  rule  that  in  my 


Preaching  Christ.  185 

preaching  I  -would  not  confirm  a  statement  by  any  argument 
that  did  not  seem  to  me  to  be  a  correct  argument,  however 
much  it  might  be  used,  and  however  influential  it  might  be. 
I  have  attemjDted  to  express  my  convictions  without  fear  of 
running  counter  to  your  opinions  and  feelings.  I  have  fre- 
quently borne  testimony  against  your  wishes,  and  sometimes 
when  there  was  no  inconsiderable  discrepancy  between  your 
thoughts  and  mine.  But  there  has  been  liberty  to  rebut  my 
statements,  and  we  have  had  unity ;  for  there  is  always  safe- 
ty where  there  is  liberty.  For  fourteen  years  I  have  attempt- 
ed to  hold  on  this  course,  although,  as  you  know,  it  has  laid 
me  open  to  great  criticism,  and  called  down  upon  my  head, 
in  the  newspapers,  from  one  end  of  the  land  to  the  other,  the 
most  opprobrious  epithets  and  the  most  unmeasured  abuse, 
as  having  degraded  the  Sabbath  day  and  the  pulpit  by  intro- 
ducing into  my  discourses  subjects  foreign  to  religion. 

Now,  after  fourteen  years  have  passed,  there  comes  this 
great  period,  this  critical  period,  this  Gethsemane  and  cruci- 
fixion day  of  this  nation,  out  of  which  shall  come  new  life 
and  glorious  salvation.*  And  what  has  taken  place  ?  Almost 
every  minister  in  the  land  has  thrown  away  his  antiquated 
notion  that  it  is  wrong  to  jDreach  about  secular  topics  on  Sun- 
day. There  is  not  a  pulpit  in  the  South  that  has  not  sound- 
ed over  and  over  again  the  subject  of  war.  The  value  of 
political  preaching  is  recognized  there.  And  so  it  is  at  the 
North.  There  is  scarcely  a  church  in  this  city  or  New  York 
from  which,  in  these  times  when  men's  souls  burn  with  patri- 
otism, the  Stars  and  Stripes  have  not  floated,  and  in  which 
Sunday  political  sermorfs  have  not  been  preached.  The  min- 
isters of  all  denominations  have  introduced  into  their  Sab- 
bath discourses  political  topics.  The  whole  community  were 
so  united  in  their  zeal  for  the  country  that  they  would  not 
sufier  silence.  And  every  man's  heart  said,  "  It  is  right ;  it 
must  be  right."    They  felt  that  there  was  a  propriety  in 

*  This  sermon  was  preached  in  the  midst  of  the  civil  war. 


186  Preaching  Christ. 

measuring  human  conduct  in  state  affairs  by  tlie  everlasting 
principles  of  truth  and  justice. 

The  sublimest  history  of  the  Church  of  Christ,  I  think, 
within  the  last  twenty-five  years,  has  taken  place  during  the 
last  three  or  four  months,  when  the  ministers  of  churches 
have  with  one  accord  so  far  broken  away  from  the  shackles 
that  have  bound  them  as  to  discuss  secular  topics  in  the  light 
of  the  Gosj^el.  Now  I  think  we  shall  hear  nothing  more 
against  politics  in  the  pulpit. 

A  man  may  preach  politics  too  much.  A  man  may  do  it 
foolishly.  So  a  man  may  administer  a  bank  foolishly,  manu- 
facture foolishly,  or  carry  on  any  other  business  foolishly ;  but 
that  is  no  reason  why  a  bank  should  not  be  established,  why 
a  man  should  not  engage  in  manufacturing,  or  why  business 
of  any  sort  should  not  be  carried  on.  A  minister  may  not  be 
discreet  in  preaching  upon  secular  topics,  but  that  is  no  rea- 
son why  they  should  not  be  preached  U230n.  There  have 
been  indiscreet  ministers  from  the  days  of  the  apostles,  and 
it  would  be  strange  if  in  the  future  there  should  not  be 
found  here  and  there  one  that  is  not  discreet.  But  the 
duty  of  introducing  such  topics  is  now  generally  acknowl- 
edged. I  think  that  question  is  settled  for  your  life  and 
mine,  at  least. 

I  will  make  but  one  more  remark  before  I  close,  and  that 
is  this.  While  we  are  pomting  out  the  mischiefs  that  will  be 
apt  to  come  into  the  Church  and  the  pulpit,  as  it  is  said,  by 
the  introduction  of  these  toj)ics  on  the  Sabbath-day,  is  it  not 
time  for  Christians  to  begin  to  consider  the  state  of  the 
Church  and  the  pulpit  ?  I  am  not  fiHed  with  alarm,  because, 
God  reigns ;  but  in  so  far  as  human  influence  is  concerned,  my 
own  impression  is  that  the  Church  and  the  pulpit  are  di'ifting 
out  to  sea.  Not  because  they  are  so  incorrect  in  doctrine — 
it  is  worse  than  that.  Incorrectness  of  doctrine  is  apt  to  be 
only  a  pimple  on  the  surface  that  shows  the  state  of  the 
blood.  The  trouble  is,  they  are  ceasing  to  be  the  voice  of 
God  in  the  community.     And  what  is  the  consequence  ?    It 


Preaching  Christ.  187 

is  that  more  and  more  the  community  are  leaving  them. 
People  in  this  country  do  not  attend  church  any  thing  like 
as  much  as  they  did  in  my  younger  days.  I  do  not  think 
one  third  of  the  people  of  this  nation  are  accustomed  to  at- 
tend church.  And  I  do  not  think  the  proportion  that  attend 
church  is  gaining.  I  fear  that  we  are  losing  ground  in  this 
regard.  While  the  introduction  of  life  questions  and  life  in- 
terests is  forbidden,  so  that  men  go  to  church  to  listen  to 
things  that  they  do  not  care  about,  to  hear  doctrines  preach- 
ed upon  that  they  do  not  understand,  and  do  not  want  to 
understand,  we  shall  lose  ground  more  and  more.  Until 
you  make  preaching  the  preliminary  of  practical  living,  so 
that  men  shall  say,  "By  it  I  find  my  fears  removed,  my 
hopes  strengthened,  my  weaknesses  inspired,  and  my  dis- 
couragements lessened,"  it  will  not  be  of  much  benefit  to 
the  world.  Not  until  it  makes  men  better  as  merchants, 
farmers,  mechanics,  and  mariners,  will  it  be  an  instrument  of 
very  great  good.  But  when  the  Church  has  this  witness 
among  the  common  people  that  it  is  a  place  where  there  is 
salvation  and  the  water  of  life,  then  you  need  not  be  afraid 
but  what  it  will  grow. 

Let  us  then,  my  brethren,  remember,  not  that  doctrine  is 
wrong,  and  that  religious  truth  is  not  to  be  unfolded,  but 
this — that  the  end  of  all  truth  is  the  conviction  and  conver- 
sion of  men  ;  the  edifying  them  in  Christian  life ;  the  recon- 
struction of  human  society,  so  that  the  whole  earth  shall  be 
as  a  temple  of  God.  And  if  this  be  the  end  of  all  teaching 
and  preaching,  we  must  broaden  our  conceptions  of  the  duty 
of  the  pulpit,  and  we  must  give  pulpit  liberty.^ 

All  liberty  is  intoxicating.  If  you  bring  up  a  generation 
of  young  men  with  this  doctrine,  you  must  expect  that  many 
will  be  imprudent,  and  foolish,  and  mischievous.  And  when 
men  point  to  them  and  say,  "  There,  that  is  the  fruit  of  your 
famous  liberty  of  the  pulpit,"  we  may  reply, "  The  begm- 
nings  of  greater  freedom  are  like  the  beginnings  of  daylight." 
When  Christ  had  touched  the  man's  eyes  once,  he  said,  "  I 


188  Preaching  Christ. 

see  men  as  trees  walking."  When  he  had  touched  them 
twice — that  is,  when  he  had  given  him  more  of  the  same 
sort — he  saw  every  man  clearly.  If  a  little  liberty  does  not 
make  men  stable,  give  them  more  of  it.  Put  responsibility 
on  them,  forbear  with  their  mistakes,  encourage  them,  and 
when  the  pressure  of  responsibility  is  more  and  more  real- 
ized, they  will  be  more  stable,  and  move  in  larger  circuits, 
and  with  more  glory  to  God,  and  quicker  salvation  to  the 
human  family. 


VIII. 

:^renrjitng  Smiib  Cjirist  nn&  fm  €xmM, 


PreacJied  in  Plymouth  Church,  Brooklyn,  Sabbath  evening, 
September  22d,  1861. 


Preaching  Christ. 


"And  I,  brethren,  when  I  came  to  j^ou,  came  not  with  excellency  of  speech 
or  of  wisdom,  declaring  unto  you  the  testimony  of  God.  For  I  deter- 
mined not  to  know  any  thing  among  you  save  Jesus  Christ,  and  him 
crucified." — 1  Con.,  ii.,  1,  2. 

The  New  Testament  teaches,  in  the  most  nnequivocal  man- 
ner, that  Jesus  Christ  is  very  God.  He  may  therefore  be  con- 
ceived as  dwelling  in  the  majesty  and  supernal  glory  of  heav- 
enly government.  Or  we  may  follow  faintly  in  imagination 
all  the  rounds  of  creation,  and  conceive  of  his  creative  acts ; 
for  all  things  were  made  by  him,  and  without  him  was  not 
any  thing  made  that  is  made.  Or  we  may  consider  his  ad- 
ministrative life,  and  reflect  upon  his  power  in  renewing,  sus- 
taining, and  enriching  the  natural  world.  Or  we  may  con- 
ceive of  him  as  the  head  of  a  government  over  mankind,  ad- 
ministered through  natural  laws,  with  special  divine  volitions 
and  purposes  which  we  call  providential.  In  either  case  our 
conceptions  will  be  profitable  and  ennobling ;  but  they  will 
benefit  us  just  in  proportion  as  we  are  advanced  in  moral 
culture,  and  have  begun  to  be  ourselves  in  some  measure  like 
God.  "  Blessed  are  the  pure  in  heart,  for  they  shall  see  God." 
But  ah !  how  many,  then,  can  see  him  ?  Without  holiness 
no  man  shall  see  the  Lord.  But  the  whole  world  lieth  in 
wickedness ;  and  how  shall  we  arouse  them,  inspire  hope  in 
them,  and  bring  them,  imj)erfect,  sinful,  and  guilty,  to  be  in- 
fluenced of  God?  The  reply  is  already  uttered  in  these 
words :  "  The  Lamb  of  God,  which  taketh  away  the  sin  of 
the  world." 


192  Preaching  Christ. 

Those  traits  and  attributes  which  lead  God  to  pardon  sin 
and  to  heal  sinners  are  manifested  in  Christ  Jesus,  and  it  was 
this  pardoning  aspect  of  Christ  as  God  that  the  apostle  so 
much  dwelt  upon  and  so  insists  upon  here.  For  he  does  not 
merely  declare, "  I  determined  not  to  know  any  thing  among 
you  save  Jesus  Christ."  He  might  know  him  as  Creator, 
and  even  as  Administrator.  He  declares,  "  I  determined  not 
to  know  any  thing  among  you  save  Christ,  and  him  crucifiecV 
It  is  a  crucified  Savior,  and  not  merely  the  Savior  Christ  as 
God,  that  the  apostle  was  determined  to  know.  And  in  the 
chapter  preceding  this  he  says, "  The  preaching  of  the  cross 
is  to  them  that  perish  foolishness;  but  unto  us  which  are 
saved,  it  is  the  power  of  God."  Not  the  presentation  of 
Christ  as  God  that  is  often  made,  but  that  peculiar  presenta- 
tion of  Christ  as  God  which  the  cross  symbolizes — it  is  this 
that  the  asjDOstle  declares  to  be  the  foundation  of  his  minis- 
try. The  very  reliance  which  he  had  for  success  was  this — 
that  he  believed  in  such  a  Savior,  and  was  determined  to 
draw  from  the  consideration  of  such  a  Savior  all  those  influ- 
ences by  which  he  hoped  to  effect  the  renovation  of  men  and 
of  society. 

This  is  the  reason,  then,  Avhy  Paul  so  much  emphasized  the 
cross,  the  crucifixion,  and  the  death  of  Christ.  It  is  God 
under  material  conditions,  suffering  unto  bodily  death  for 
sinful  men,  that  furnishes  the  most  stimulating  and  subduing 
influences  that  can  be  brought  to  bear  upon  the  human  souL 
Therefore,  in  going  forth  upon  his  apostolic  mission,  he  relied 
upon  the  influences  that  there  were  in  a  crucified  Savior  to 
revolutionize  the  human  soul  and  transform  the  life. 

It  is  said  that  Christ  crucified  was  iinto  the  Jews  a  stum- 
bling-block, and  unto  the  Greeks  foolishness.  The  Jew  had 
a  conception  of  the  Messiah,  but  it  was  an  intensely  worldly 
conception.  It  was  altogether  sensuous — physical.  It  con- 
templated empire ;  earthly  wealth;  political  power;  palaces, 
and  thrones,  and  armies,  and  dominions.  When,  therefore,  a 
broken  Jesus  was  presented  to  them,  humbling  himself,  and 


Preaching  Christ.  193 

becoming  obedient  unto  death,  even  the  death  of  the  cross, 
lower  than  the  lowest,  and  less  than  the  least,  he  was  indeed 
a  stumbling-block  to  the  Jews.  He  was  foolishness  to  the 
Greeks.  There  was  no  part  of  their  nature  that  could  un- 
derstand him.  There  was  no  part  of  their  nature  that  could 
understand  the  suffering  of  the  Divine  Being  for  the  sake  of 
his  creatures.  In  all  their  mythology  there  was  no  record 
of  any  gods  that  had  any  trait  or  attribute  which  would  lead 
them  to  suffer  in  behalf  of  inferior  beings. 

But  Paul  had  felt  the  power  on  his  own  heart  of  a  broken 
Chiist.  The  presentation  of  such  a  Christ  had  done  its  work 
upon  him.  He  knew  what  it  had  done  for  him.  He  had 
seen,  too,  what  influence  it  had  upon  others ;  and  it  was  the 
very  power  by  which  he  hoped  to  change  the  world. 

There  is  a  great  scale  of  motives  which  influence  men,  and 
which  may,  in  their  own  rank  and  place,  be  addressed  to  men 
for  the  production  of  right  conduct.  "We  may  attempt  to 
dissuade  men  from  evil  by  the  intrinsic  hatefulness  of  evil. 
We  may  attempt  to  persuade  men  to  a  course  of  holiness  on 
account  of  the  beauty  of  holiness.  We  may  teach  men  to 
leave  off  things  that  are  wrong,  and  to  revolt  from  them  be- 
cause they  are  wrong.  We  may  teach  men  to  follow  that 
which  is  good  because  goodness  is  attractive  to  every  right- 
minded  and  noble  nature.  In  this  intrmsic  hatefulness  of 
evil  and  attractiveness  of  good  there  is  a  power  which  we 
may  properly  employ.  We  may  appeal  to  the  self-interest 
of  men,  and  teach  that  "  godliness  is  profitable  in  all  things, 
having  promise  of  the  life  that  now  is,  and  of  that  which  is 
to  come."  There  is  a  degree  of  power  in  that  presentation 
to  many  minds.  There  are  motives  that  may  in  some  meas- 
ure touch  every  faculty  of  the  soul.  But  in  its  nature  the 
soul  responds  most,  not  to  those  collateral  motives  which  are 
drawn  from  the  things  which  exist  about  us,  but  to  those 
which  bring  upon  us  the  influence  of  God's  own  personal 
presence.  The  sense  of  his  being,  of  his  eternity,  and  of  the 
immortality  in  which  he  dwells — this  is  that  to  which  the 
IL— N 


194  Preaching  Christ. 

soul  most  responds.  It  is  true  that  men  are  so  shut  out 
from  these  views  that  they  are,  as  a  matter  of  fact,  more 
powerfully  influenced  by  worldly  considerations ;  but  the  na- 
ture of  the  mind  is  such  that  when  you  can  fairly  bring  to 
bear  upon  it  these  higher  motives,  they  are  capable  of  pro- 
ducing greater  changes  in  it  than  can  any  secular,  sordid  mo- 
tives whatsoever. 

But  when  divine  and  infinite  things  are  brought  before  the 
mind,  some  things  are  more  apt  to  stimulate  men  than  others. 
Those  views  which  impress  the  mind  with  its  own  weakness, 
and  want,  and  imperfection,  and  guilt,  and  dreadful  danger, 
are  very  apt  to  be  influential.  The  impression  of  these  things 
upon  the  mind  is  the  result  of  preaching  Christ  crucified ;  of 
calling  attention  to  the  stupendousuess  of  the  ofiering  that  he 
made  when  he  gave  himself  for  the  world ;  of  pointing  out 
all  the  steps  accompanying  his  mission  on  earth,  that  were 
afterward  declared  to  be  necessary  on  account  of  the  sinful- 
ness of  every  human  creature,  from  which  sinfulness,  without 
the  atonement,  men  could  never  have  been  saved.  It  is  im- 
possible, it  seems  to  me,  to  produce  a  rational  and  realizing 
sense  of  man's  sinfulness  unless  you  make  sin  to  consist  in 
violations  against  a  living  person.  "When  you  preach  to  men 
that  they  have  broken  the  law  of  God,  they  do  not  seem  to  be 
brought  very  near  to  the  Divine  Majesty;  but  when  you  hold 
up  before  them  not  only  the  justice  of  God,  but  his  generosi- 
ty as  manifested  through  Christ,  recounting  to  them  the  his- 
tory of  his  sufierings  and  the  story  of  his  love,  you  bring 
them  to  a  sense  of  their  ofiense  against  the  Most  High,  which 
wakes  up  in  the  soul,  if  there  is  a  spark  of  love  in  it,  a  gener- 
ous sorrow.  If  you  desire  to  bring  to  men  a  view  that  shall 
convict  them  of  their  sinfulness,  you  must  sj^read  before  them 
the  suflerings  and  death,  as  well  as  the  love  and  everlasting 
beneficence  of  the  Lord  Jesus  Christ.  You  may  measure  hu- 
man conduct  by  law,  and  represent  the  issues  of  conduct  as 
wise  or  foolish ;  but,  after  all,  though  there  is  a  certain  meas- 
ure of  truth  in  this  direction,  that  which  seizes  the  soul,  and 


Pee  ACHING  Christ.  195 

fills  it  with  enthusiasm  of  emotion,  is  that  truth  which  brings 
before  the  mind  the  character  of  Christ  as  the  Savior  of 
sinners. 

Those  views  which  represent  God  as  profoundly  concerned 
for  man,  as  attempting  to  rescue  him,  and  as  willing  himself 
to  bear  the  pains  and  penalties  of  sin  rather  than  that  we 
should  suffer,  have  in  their  very  nature  a  remarkable  power 
and  tendency  to  arouse  and  affect  the  whole  human  soul. 

Those  views  Avhich  represent  the  attractive  love  of  God, 
burning  in  his  deep  soul  toward  sinful  bemgs  while  yet  in  sin, 
and  working  out  endlessly  in  endeavors  to  build  them  uj)  in 
beauty  and  holiness,  are  admirably  adapted  to  influence  the 
minds  of  men. 

Those  views  which  represent  the  intimate  love  of  Christ 
for  his  disciples,  and  his  familiarity  with  them,  and  the  spir- 
itual communion  which  is  begun  here  and  is  to  be  consum- 
mated hereafter,  disclosing  the  whole  economy  of  God's  sav- 
ing grace  as  manifested  in  Christ  Jesus,  have  a  constitutional, 
and,  I  might  almost  say,  an  everlasting  relation  to  the  under- 
standing, to  the  feelings,  to  the  will,  to  every  part  of  the  hu- 
man soul. 

This  revelation  of  God  in  Christ  is  a  power  compared  with 
which  there  is  no  other  power  worth  naming.  It  is  the  wis- 
dom of  God.  It  is  the  power  of  God  unto  salvation.  Above 
all  other  known  influences  it  controls  the  human  heai't,  in- 
spires it  with  love,  and  with  purity  through  loving. 

Therefore,  when  the  apostle  said,  "  I  determined  not  to 
know  any  thing  among  you  save  Jesus  Christ,  and  him  cru- 
cified," he  avowed  his  faith  that  in  the  presentation  of  the 
divine  nature  as  represented  by  Christ,  there  is  more  moral 
power  upon  the  heart  and  the  conscience  than  in  any  other 
thing,  and  his  determination  to  draw  influences  from  that 
source  in  all  his  work. 

In  view  of  this,  I  remark, 

1.  The  personal  influence  of  Jesus  Christ  upon  the  heart  is 
the  first  requisite  for  a  Christian  preacher.     We  may  preach 


196  Preaching  Christ. 

much  about  Christ,  but  no  man  will  preach  Christ  except  so 
far  as  Christ  is  in  him.  No  man  can  set  forth  the  soul's 
need  of  Christ  who  has  not  felt  that  need  in  his  own  soul. 
No  man  can  urgently  plead  the  joy  of  salvation  through 
Christ  who  has  not  experienced  that  joy  in  his  own  heart. 
It  is  not  enough  to  have  a  knowledge  of  theology,  though 
that  is  not  to  be  despised.  It  is  not  enough  to  know  the 
mind  of  man,  though  the  philosophy  of  the  human  mind  is 
not  to  be  disregarded,  and  is,  in  its  place,  almost  indisi^ensa- 
ble.  The  secret  of  success  in  the  preaching  of  the  Gospel  is 
that  the  preacher  himself  shall  have  felt  the  power  of  that 
Gospel.  There  are  many  men  that  by  natural  gifts  are  quali- 
fied to  stand  eminent  and  pre-eminent  above  their  fellows, 
who,  though  they  have  a  certain  kind  of  personal  influence, 
exert  but  little  religious  influence ;  and,  on  the  other  hand, 
there  are  many  men  that  are  comparatively  of  slender  stature 
and  small  endowment,  whose  life  is  like  a  rushing,  mighty 
wind  m  the  influence  which  it  exerts.  The  presence  of  Christ 
in  them  is  the  secret  of  their  power.  The  poorest  man,  the 
most  ignorant  man,  is  mighty  through  God.  If  his  soul  is 
aroused  and  inspired  by  the  hope,  by  the  faith,  and  the  love 
which  are  in  Christ  Jesus,  he  has  a  power  that  others  can  not 
derive  from  mere  learning,  from  wisdom,  or  from  any  other 
source. 

It  is  not  learning,  nor  eloquence,  nor  flow  of  natural  enthu- 
siasm, but  that  stir  and  glow  which  a  genuine  experience  of 
love,  and  faith  in  Christ  give,  that  make  a  man  an  efiicacious 
witness  and  teacher  of  the  Lord  Jesus  Christ.  And  I  do 
not  mean  merely  in  the  pulpit.  There  is  to  be  profession- 
al preaching,  but  every  disciple  of  the  Lord  Jesus  Christ 
is,  in  his  own  way,  to  be  a  preacher.  Every  parent  is 
to  be  a  preacher  to  his  children.  Every  schoolmaster  or 
schoolmistress  is  to  be  a  preacher  to  his  or  her  pupils.  Ev- 
ery man  is  to  be  a  preacher  to  those  that  are  subject  to 
his  influence.  There  is  not  a  Christian  who  has  not  a  jjarish 
in  which  he  is  bound  to  preach.     Where  there  is  a  palpita- 


Preaching  Christ.  197 

ting  love  of  holiness,  where  there  is  a  zealous  fear  of  offend- 
ing God,  where  the  soul  yearns  and  longs  for  Christ  Jesus, 
it  is  strange  with  what  a  witching  power  it  is  endowed. 

2.  A  man's  success  in  preaching  will  depend  upon  his  pow- 
er of  presenting  before  men  the  Lord  Jesus  Christ.  I  have 
said  that  the  experience  of  Christ's  presence  in  one's  own 
soul  was  the  first  requisite.  This  requisite  being  possessed, 
he  will  have  most  success  in  selecting  tojiics  for  discourses 
who  has  power  most  effectually  to  present  to  the  minds  of 
his  congregation  the  nature  of  God  as  set  forth  in  Christ 
Jesus.  There  is  a  great  deal  of  useful  didactic  matter  that 
every  minister  must  give  to  his  congregation.  There  is  a 
great  deal  of  doctrinal  matter  that  he  must  introduce  into 
his  preaching.  I  do  not  dissuade  from  doctrine.  It  is  only 
the  despotisms  of  doctrine  that  I  would  discountenance.  <No 
one  is  fit  to  instruct  his  congregation  who  can  not  present, 
with  some  logical  coherence,  the  great  truths  of  which  he 
speaks.  Doctrines  have  their  place  in  preachmg,  though  not 
the  chiefest  place.  There  is  also  much  of  fact,  of  history, 
and  of  description  that  belongs  to  the  ministerial  desk.  The 
Bible  is  full  of  material  for  these  things.  Ethics  should  oc- 
cupy an  important  place  in  every  minister's  teaching.  The 
nature  of  the  human  mind ;  the  methods  by  which  it  acts ; 
the  analysis  of  character ;  men's  occupations ;  all  the  sinuous 
channels  in  which  our  thoughts  and  feelings  run — these  are 
things  that  it  is  proper  to  take  i\p  and  explain  in  the  pulpit. 

But  high  above  all  these  topics ;  high  above  abstract 
propositions ;  high  above  facts  of  history ;  above  all  de- 
scriptions ;  above  all  teaching  of  what  is  right  and  duty — 
high  above  them  all  is  the  fountain  of  influence,  Christ,  a  liv- 
ing person  who  gave  himself  a  ransom  for  sinners,  and  now 
ever  lives  to  make  intercession  for  them.  Though  one 
preaches  every  other  truth,  if  he  leaves  this  chiefest  one  out, 
or  abbreviates  it,  he  will  come  short  of  the  essential  work  of 
the  Gospel.  Put  this  in,  and  you  have  all,  as  it  were,  in 
brief.     The  power  of  the  Christian  ministry  is  in  the  pre- 


198  Preaching  Christ. 

sentation,  not  simply  of  great  truths,  but  of  the  truth  as  it  is 
in  Christ  Jesus.  Li  that  will  be  the  measure  of  its  real  and 
lasting  influence. 

3.  There  can  be  no  sound  and  effective  method  of  preach- 
ing ethics,  even,  which  does  not  derive  their  authority  from 
the  Lord  Christ.  The  motives  derivable  from  the  secular 
and  human  side  of  ethics  are  relatively  feeble.  Even  if  one 
chose  to  preach  the  great  moralities  of  life,  it  were  wise  to 
ground  them  in  God.  Morality,  without  spirituality,  has  no 
roots.  It  becomes  a  thmg  of  custom,  changeable,  transient, 
and  optional.  The  dispute  sometimes  waged  between  doc- 
trine and  practice  would  never  be  allowed  if  high  doctrines 
reached  forth  to  practical  results,  and  if  precepts  and  morality 
reached  back  to  divine  authority.  There  is  no  need  of  con- 
troj^ersy  any  more  than  between  science  and  art,  between 
pure  mathematics  and  mathematics  applied,  between  analytic 
chemistry  and  organic  chemistry. 

There  may  be  a  practical  mistake  in  the  proportionate  ad- 
ministration of  the  one  or  the  other  element — the  abstract  or 
the  concrete ;  but  the  dynamics  and  proportions  of  teaching 
must  be  largely  left  to  the  judgment  and  the  original  nature 
of  each  teacher.  Men  work  by  difierent  mental  instruments. 
Each  man  has  a  right  to  his  own  genius ;  but,  whatever 
method  is  pursued,  the  indispensable  connection  between  the 
spiritual  element  and  the  practical  development  should  be 
mamtained.  Morality  without  spirituality  is  a  plant  without 
root,  and  spirituality  without  morality  is  a  root  without  stem 
and  leaves. 

The  great  mistake  which  men  make  in  regard  to  the  intro- 
duction into  the  pulpit  on  the  Sabbath-day  of  what  are  call- 
ed secular  topics,  is,  that  they  do  not  conceive  that  such  top- 
ics are  to  be  discussed  in  the  light  of  higher  truths,  and  that 
they  are  to  derive  their  influence  and  authority  from  the  con- 
siderations which  flow  from  the  nature  of  Christ,  and  his 
claims  upon  us.  I  have  a  right  to  speak  upon  agriculture 
here — not  as  agricxxlture  alone,  but  in  the  relations  which  it 


Preaching  Christ.  199 

sustains  to  religion.  "  Ye  are  God's  husbandry,"  saith  the 
apostle.  Many  men  are  in  that  calling.  It  has  an  influence 
upon  their  thoughts,  and  feelings,  and  acts,  and  is  working  all 
the  time  in  one  way  or  another  upon  their  souls,  and  it  is  my 
business  to  draw  from  it  lessons  for  their  instruction  and  ben- 
efit. Are  you  called  to  be  a  mariner  ?  Then  there  are  a  thou- 
sand lessons  that  it  is  my  business  to  draw  from  the  life  of 
a  mariner,  because  they  touch  you.  Are  you  called  to  be  a 
tradesman  ?  Then  there  are  multitudes  of  lessons  that  it 
is  my  business  to  draw  from  the  vocation  of  a  tradesman, 
because  it  is  taking  hold  of  your  tastes  and  habits,  and  is 
framing  and  fashioning  something  of  your  immortality.  I 
am  bound  to  discuss  financial  questions — not  for  the  sake  of 
money,  as  a  banker  would  discuss  them,  but  because  they 
have  an  influence  upon  the  life  and  destiny  of  those  whom 
they  concern.  I  have  a  right  to  introduce  into  my  sermons  all 
secular  topics  as  far  as  they  are  connected  with  man's  moral 
character,  and  his  hopes  of  immortality.  If  I  discuss  them 
in  a  merely  secular  way,  I  desecrate  the  pulpit ;  but  if  I  dis- 
cuss them  in  the  spirit  of  Christ,  and  for  Christ's  sake,  that 
I  may  draw  men  out  of  their  peculiar  dangers,  and  lead  them 
into  a  course  of  right  living,  then  I  give  dignity  and  nobility 
to  the  pulpit. 

4.  All  reformations  of  evil  in  society,  all  civil  and  social 
reformations,  should  spring  from  this  vital  centre.  It  seems 
to  me  to  be  a  very  dangerous  thing  to  preach  Christ  so  that 
your  preaching  shall  not  be  a  constant  rebuke  to  all  the  evil 
in  the  community.  That  man  who  so  preaches  Christ,  doc- 
trinally  or  historically,  that  no  one  takes  ofiense,  no  one 
feels  rebuked,  no  one  trembles,  is  not  a  legitimate  and  faith- 
ful preacher  of  Chi-ist.  On  the  other  hand,  it  is  a  dangerous 
thing  for  a  man  to  attack  evil  in  the  spu-it  of  only  hatred. 
To  arouse  evil  feelings  against  evil,  to  contend  against  ma- 
lignant mischief  by  malignant  passions,  is  surely  not  Chris- 
tian !  The  sublime  wisdom  of  the  New  Testament  is  this : 
"Overcome   evil  with  good."    The  fundamental  rule   for 


200  Preaching  Christ. 

a  reformer  is  that  he  shall  not  only  hate  evil,  but  cleave 
to  that  which  is  good.  A  man's  love  of  that  which  is  good 
should  be  more  powerful,  if  possible,  than  his  hatred  of  that 
which  is  evil;  for  if  a  man  attempts  to  reform  evil  be- 
cause he  hates  it,  he  brings  himself  into  one  of  the  most 
dangerous  states  of  mind.  It  is  demoralizing  to  a  commu- 
nity to  have  reforms  spring  from  hatred  of  evil ;  but  those 
reforms  which  spring  from  the  love  of  Christ  are  regulated, 
tempered,  restrained.  That  man  only  is  truly  a  reformer 
who  is  a  Christian  reformer.  Was  Christ  not  a  reformer? 
Did  he  not  come  to  save  the  world  ?  Did  he  not  come  to 
save  the  intemperate,  the  unjust,  the  dishonest  ?  And  when 
he  lived,  did  he  not  hate  evil  ?  Did  he  not  abhor  it  ?  "Was 
he  not  that  God  before  whose  sight  no  evil  could  be  allow- 
ed? And  yet  with  what  wondrous  pity,  and  with  what 
sweetness  of  love  did  he  dwell  in  the  midst  of  these  things, 
so  that  the  publicans — those  men  that  were  debauched  and 
corrupted  with  the  handling  of  public  moneys,  learning  every 
trick  of  iniquity  in  consequence  of  it — so  that  the  publicans 
and  the  sinners  (for  that  is  the  term  by  which  those  fallen 
creatures  that  even  to  this  day  swarm  our  streets  are  known 
in  Scripture)  took  heart,  became  inspired  with  hope,  and  drew 
near  to  him  in  strong  faith  and  confidence  that  there  was 
pity  for  them  in  him.  Christ  reformed  men  by  inspiring 
the  love  of  goodness  as  well  as  by  hatred  of  evil,  and  he 
drew  men  from  their  sin  as  well  as  drove  them  from  it.  All 
hatred  of  evil  is  unchristian  which  is  not  mingled  with  com- 
passion for  the  evil-doer.  The  passions  are  to  be  controlled 
by  the  inspiration  of  moral  sentiments.  The  sweetness  of 
that  which  is  good,  the  beauty  of  that  which  is  right,  the 
majesty  of  that  which  is  just  and  true,  are  to  work  along 
with  the  hatred  of  evil,  and  to  work  in  double  measure.  Evil 
is  to  be  abhorred,  but  abhorrence  must  not  overtop  benevo- 
lence ! 

The  cleansing  of  the  immoral,  the  liberation  of  the  enslaved, 
the  restraint  of  sultry  lusts,  the  detection  of  criminals  and 


Preaching  Christ.  201 

tlieir  punishment,  the  mitigation  of  selfishness,  the  hnmilia- 
tion  of  pride,  the  resistance  of  greed  and  avarice,  are  pre-em- 
inently labors  of  love,  and  not  of  wrath.  Hatred  will  never 
reform  any  thing.  It  may  destroy,  but  Love  is  the  only 
architect. 

5.  Hence  all  philanthropies  are  partial  and  imperfect  that 
do  not  grow  out  of  this  same  root.  As  all  hatred  of  evil  is 
dangerous  that  is  not  inspired  and  accompanied  by  the  love 
of  Christ,  so  that  philanthropy,  or  the  attempt  to  organize 
positive  good  in  human  life,  is  lacking,  which  does  not  spring 
from  the  same  organizing  centre,  and  which  is  not  inspired 
by  the  same  influence.  But  when  philanthropy  springs  from 
this  centre,  and  is  inspired  by  this  influence,  it  becomes,  not 
a  mere  sentimentalism,  but  a  vivid  and  veritable  power  in  hu- 
man society.  There  are  no  true  philanthropists,  it  seems  to 
me,  but  those  that  take  man  in  his  whole  nature ;  that  look 
upon  him  as  a  creature  of  God's  just  government,  as  a  child 
of  immortality,  a  subject  of  divine  rewards  and  penalties ;  and 
that  attempt  to  build  up  in  him  that  which  is  good,  accord- 
ing to  the  largest  pattern  of  spiritual  truth.  Philanthropy 
without  religion  becomes  meagre.  It  is  the  love  of  man  un- 
inspired by  the  love  of  God ! 

6.  All  public  questions  of  justice,  of  liberty,  of  equity, 
of  purity,  of  intelligence,  should  be  vitalized  by  the  power 
which  is  in  Christ  Jesus.  There  are  other  motives  that  may 
press  men  forward  a  little  way,  but  there  is  nothing  that 
has  such  controlling  power  as  the  personal  influence  of  the 
Lord  Jesus.  When,  therefore,  in  such  a  time  as  this,  we 
are  crowding  along  great  subjects,  or,  rather,  when  they  are 
crowding  us  along,  and  we  are  swept  onward  in  the  current  of 
great  national  agitations,  let  us  remember  that  there  is  but 
one  way  in  which  we  can  deal  with  all  such  subjects,  and  be 
thorough,  and  at  the  same  time  certain  and  safe,  namely,  by 
making  every  one  of  them  religious  subjects,  Christian  sub- 
jects, inspired  by  direct  contact  with  the  heart  of  the  Lord 
Jesus  Christ.     When  we  brins:  secular  matters  into  this  re- 


202  Preaching  Christ. 

lation,  there  is  wholesomeness  introduced  into  them,  as  well 
as  into  us  in  the  management  of  them. 

And  now,  my  dear  Christian  friends,  are  not  these  views 
in  accordance  with  the  repeated  teaching  of  the  whole  New 
Testament  Scriptures  —  that  every  thing  which  belongs  to 
human  life  must  in  some  way  be  connected  with  the  grand 
redemptive  centre  of  moral  government,  Christ  Jesus  ? 

"  Because  we  thus  judge,  that  if  one  died  for  all,  then  were 
all  dead ;  and  that  he  died  for  all,  that  they  which  live  should 
not  henceforth  live  unto  themselves,  but  unto  him  which  died 
for  them  and  rose  again."  "  "Whether  we  live,  we  live  unto 
the  Lord ;  and  whether  we  die,  we  die  unto  the  Lord :  wheth- 
er we  live,  therefore,  or  die,  we  are  the  Lord's."  "  Whether, 
therefore,  ye  eat  or  drink,  or  whatsoever  ye  do,  do  all  to  the 
glory  of  God." 

In  our  personal  character,  in  our  enthusiasms,  in  our  imag- 
inations, in  our  enjoyments,  in  all  the  amenities  of  social  life, 
there  is  to  be  the.presence  of  this  divine  love.  In  all  that  we 
attempt  to  do  to  abate  evil,  in  all  that  we  attempt  to  do  to 
establish  good,  in  our  sympathy  and  concurrence  with  the 
great  movements  of  the  age  in  which  we  live,  our  power  to 
do  good  will  be  in  proportion  to  the  strength  and  purity  of 
our  spiritual  life.  Jesus  Christ,  and  him  crucified^  is  still  the 
wisdom  of  God,  and  the  power  of  God  unto  salvation,  not 
only  of  the  individual  heart,  but  of  civil  societies. 

If  there  be  those,  then,  that  are  ambitious,  and  that  have 
felt  with  reference  to  themselves  substantially  as  the  mother 
did  respecting  her  two  sons,  of  whom  she  said, "  Lord,  grant 
that  these  my  two  sons  may  sit,  the  one  on  thy  right  hand, 
and  the  other  on  thy  left,  in  thy  kingdom ;"  if  there  are  any 
that  have  been  desirous  of  obtaining  influence  and  power,  I 
would  say  to  them.  Beware  of  the  upswelling  of  natural 
pride ;  beware  of  an  over-active  vanity !  Remember  that  the 
road  to  power  is  not  through  self-elevation  and  self-aggran- 
dizement, but  through  humiliation.  You  are  to  come  to 
power  by  the  abasement  of  yourself  j  by  puttmg  on  the  Lord 


Preaching  Christ.  203 

Jesus  Christ ;  by  having  your  life  hid  with  Christ  in  God ; 
by  learning  to  look  at  all  things  in  the  light  of  eternity. 

Power  and  goodness  are  synonymous.  The  secret  of  true 
power  is  in  self-denial,  disinterestedness,  an  unwearied  love,  a 
faith  that  pierces  the  invisible,  and  a  hope  that  appropriates 
it !  But  those  that  go  hither  and  thither,  seeking  a  great 
name,  and  place,  and  influence ;  wishing  to  do  great  things ; 
seeking  their  own  good  and  not  another's,  and  still  less 
God's  glory — all  these  must  needs  come  short  of  the  high- 
est power.  The  burying  of  self;  the  enthroning  of  Jesus ; 
the  living,  not  for  the  visible  and  the  transient,  but  for  the 
invisible  and  the  eternal;  the  might  of  God  manifest  in 
Christ,  and  made  known  to  us  through  our  own  experience 
— these  are  the  ways  and  methods  of  power — the  secret  of 
power  not  alone  in  the  individual,  but  in  the  ministry,  in 
the  Church,  in  communities,  and  in  the  world.  Whether  we 
know  it  or  not,  God,  blessed  be  his  name !  is  overruling  our 
ignorance,  and  guiding  our  very  mistakes.  He  is  pressing  for- 
ward this  wonderful  moral  power  to  its  consummation.  The 
day  lingers,  but  shall  not  linger  forever,  when  he  shall  take 
to  himself  his  almighty  power,  and  come  and  reign  in  myri- 
ads of  now  darkened  hearts ;  in  churches  that  are  now  Chris- 
tian only  in  name ;  in  institutions  that,  though  they  were  es- 
tablished under  the  benign  influences  of  Christianity,  no  lon- 
ger represent  it ;  in  civU  councils  and  in  warlike  camps ;  and 
then  the  whole  earth  shall  see  the  salvation  of  our  God. 
Even  so.  Lord,  come  quickly  ! 

And  now,  ye  praying,  weeping,  pleading  Christians,  that 
seem  to  have  but  a  small  sphere,  remember  that  every  single 
Christian  aspiration  which  you  have,  every  vital  and  God-in- 
spired Christian  experience  that  is  wrought  out  in  you,  no 
matter  when  or  where,  becomes  a  part  of  the  riches  of  God 
in  the  world.  Money  is  money,  and,  though  locked  up  in  the 
deepest  and  darkest  vault,  every  coin  is  one  more  coin  of  the 
world's  wealth.  The  heart  is  God's  mint,  and  every  sin- 
gle evolution  of  true  Christian  feeling  is  an  addition  to  the 


204  Preaching-  Christ. 

o-reatness  of  God's  power  in  this  world.  Do  not  think  that 
you  must  he  in  some  puhlic  position.  Fulfill  in  secret  the 
will  of  Christ  Jesus.  Let  the  mind  that  was  in  Christ  be 
more  and  more  completely  in  you.  Let  the  spirit  of  Christ 
dwell  in  you  richly  in  all  things ;  and  thus  you  will  be 
preachers  of  Christ,  and  faithful  witnesses ;  and  ere  long  you 
shall  hear  that  voice,  sweeter  than  all  conceivable  music,  say- 
ing, "  Well  done,  thou  good  and  faithful  servant,  enter  thou 
into  the  joy  of  thy  Lord." 


IX. 


€jjf  l^nng-snffning  nf  #nt 


Preached  in  Plymouth  Church,  Brooklyn,  Sabbath  evening, 
February  22,(1,  1862. 


The  Long-suffeking  of  God. 


"  Howbeit,  for  this  cause  I  obtained  mercy,  that  in  me  first  Jesus  Christ 
might  show  forth  all  long-suffering." — 1  Tim.,  i.,  16. 

This  is  not  the  first  nor  the  only  time  in  the  writings  of 
Paul  in  which  he  recognizes,  with  vivid  sensibility,  the  pa- 
tience which  God  had  manifested  toward  him  personally. 
There  seems  to  have  been  in  his  heart  a  fountain  of  gratitude 
for  this  patience  which  never  exhausted  itself  The  divine 
jxoodness  in  this  regard  excited  in  his  bosom,  from  first  to 
last,  unbounded  thankfulness. 

The  long-suiFeriiig  of  God  is  much  insisted  upon  in  Script- 
ure both  by  those  who  have  experienced  it  and  by  him  who 
exercises  it.  It  is  remarkable  that  the  sacred  Scriptures 
should  have  succeeded  in  combining  the  two  apparently  dis- 
cordant views,  God's  terrible  avulsion  from  evil,  his  hatred 
of  it,  and  his  patience  with  it,  and  with  them  that  committed 
it.  The  impression  of  both  is  vividly  presented — that  God 
will  punish  sin,  and  yet  that  God  spares,  and  waits  to  be 
gracious ;  that  he  is  slow  to  anger,  and  quick  to  mercy ;  and 
yet  that  he  administers  a  government  of  justice,  and  that  in 
the  end  he  will  not  clear  the  guilty.  The  impression  of  God's 
terrible  justice  and  judgment  is  made  strong,  and  the  impres- 
sion of  God's  kindness  and  love  is  made  equally  strong. 

To-night  I  wish  to  unfold,  somewhat  at  length,  the  view 
of  God's  long-sufiering. 

In  the  first  place,  look  upon  the  radical  idea  of  human  so- 
ciety upon  earth  as  of  a  child-race  to  be  developed  and 
brought  forward.     Even  leaving  out  the  question  of  moral 


208  The  Long-suffering  of  God. 

desert,  consider  what  a  work  it  is  to  rear  up  through  thou- 
sands of  years,  in  long  succession,  a  race  that  begins,  in  all 
its  conditions,  at  nothing,  as  it  were,  and  feels  and  finds  its 
way  ujD,  little  by  little,  through  experience  to  manhood  in  the 
individual,  and  to  carry  on,  at  the  same  time,  a  development 
of  nations,  and  of  peoples  from  barbarism,  or  that  which  is 
next  akin  to  it,  up  through  civilization  to  the  highest  degree 
of  human  capacity.  Consider  that  the  elevation  of  mankind 
to  that  point  is  the  work  which  God  has  purposely  undertak- 
en. The  divine  government  is  not  a  government  that  has  a 
nation  already  furnished ;  it  is  the  government  of  a  being 
that  essays,  through  thousands  of  continuous  years,  to  go  on 
in  a  circle  of  perpetual  education  and  development.  Parents 
educate  their  children  from  infancy,  but  after  a  time  the  child 
takes  care  of  itself,  and  their  labor  ceases.  God,  the  eternal 
Father,  is  forever  in  the  nursery  and  at  the  cradle.  His  work 
never  ends.  He  has  pui'i^osed  to  himself  the  task  of  rearing 
up  a  race  which  will  require  him  to  bear  them  in  perpetual 
patience  and  long-sufiering. 

Consider,  next,  in  the  light  of  history,  what  this  race  has 
been.  Consider  what  has  fallen  out  in  the  process  of  this 
grand  experiment  of  the  world.  If  you  regard  man  compre- 
hensively, nothing  can  be  more  striking  than  that  his  animal 
part  has  predominated  since  the  world  began.  The  less,  the 
inferior,  the  lower  part  of  man,  has  been  in  the  ascendant. 
The  power  of  the  human  race  has  been  its  animal  power  thus 
far.  "Wonderful  as  have  been  the  achievements  of  civiliza- 
tion in  the  world,  man  has  been  characteristically  an  animal 
on  the  globe. 

Of  all  those  that  are  born,  by  far  the  greatest  number  an- 
swer, apparently,  no  useful  end.  Why  they  should  be  born  is 
a  marvel.  Why,  being  born,  and  only  encumbering  the 
ground  from  year  to  year,  they  should  be  continued  in  exist- 
ence, is  another  marvel.  Few  have  lived  that  have  not  been 
a  burden  on  the  earth.  Of  men  in  their  best  conditions  in  a 
civilized  community,  how  many  are  there  that  have  given 


The  Long-suffering  of  God.  209 

to  the  stock  of  human  thoughts  one  single  thought  that  has 
lived  after  they  were  gone  ?  How  many  even  of  those  that 
are  civilized,  and  restrained  by  the  influences  of  Christianity, 
so  widely  difiused,  have  given  incarnation,  and  so  additional 
force,  to  the  truth,  in  human  life  ?  How  many  ra-e  there  who 
have  created  any  thing  that  survives  them  ?  How  many  are 
there  who  will  be  mourned  one  day  when  they  are  gone  ex- 
cei3t  by  those  personally  connected  with  them  ?  In  respect 
to  ninety-nine  in  a  hundred,  it  may  be  said  that  they  would 
not  be  missed  an  hour  if  they  should  die.  There  is,  here  and 
there,  one  at  the  head  of  a  business,  one  in  a  school,  or  one 
belonging  to  a  family,  that  would  be  missed  much  longer 
than  that ;  but  in  respect  to  the  great  majority,  it  may  be 
said  that  if  they  should  be  stricken  out  of  existence,  in  an 
hour  they  would  not  be  missed  more  than  a  pebble  is  miss- 
ed, that,  being  thrown  into  the  water,  makes  a  circle  and 
goes  down,  never  again  to  be  seen  by  human  eyes.  The 
greatest  number  of  men  that  are  born,  even  into  civiliza- 
tion, live  and  die  without  one  single  heroic  purpose ;  without 
one  noble  achievement ;  without  doing  a  thing  to  make  men 
better.  They  simply  constitute  a  link  in  the  chain  of  the 
race. 

Consider  how  l^nwilling  men  are  to  obey  both  natural  and 
moral  laws.  Some  do  not  know  them,  and  those  we  do  not 
blame  so  much ;  but  those  that  know,  I  will  not  say  the  Dec- 
alogue, but  the  plainer  laws  that  selfishness  should  have 
taught  them  to  obey — the  laws  of  man's  own  body — how 
many  are  there  that  have  not  done  violence  to  every  organ, 
nei've,  and  vessel  in  their  physical  system  ?  Men  violate  the 
laws  of  the  stomach,  of  the  brain,  of  the  heart,  of  every  part 
of  their  outward  being,  and  that  continually.  And  this  is 
not  so  in  single  instances  merely — it  is  characteristic  of  the 
race.  It  is  marked  by  diseases,  which  show  that  vengeance 
has  scarred  them  for  the  violation  of  natural  laws.  How  lim- 
ited is  the  understanding,  by  reason  of  the  violation  of  the 
laws  of  the  understanding.     How  weak  is  the  moral  sense, 

H.— O 


210  The  Long-suffering  of  God. 

by  reason  of  a  perpetual  violation  of  the  laws  of  the  moral 
sense.  If  yon  consider,  either  in  detail  or  comprehensively, 
what  is  the  great  schedule  of  laws  under  which  this  race  was 
created  to  act,  nothing  can  be  more  striking  than  this :  that 
they  have  been  willfully,  and  pertinaciously,  and  generically 
disobedient. 

Consider  how  slow  has  been  the  progress  of  amelioration 
and  civilization  in  the  world.  After  the  lapse  of  six  thou- 
sand years,  what  is  the  state  of  manhood  ?  The  old  patri- 
archs lived,  and  established  institutions,  and  died,  and  left 
records;  judges  and  prophets  lived,  and  bore  witness,  and 
passed  away,  and  left  records ;  later  prophets  lived,  and  gave 
their  testimony,  and  departed ;  the  Savior  came,  and  perform- 
ed his  earthly  mission,  and  returned  to  him  that  sent  him ; 
the  apostles  appeared,  and  went  forth,  and  spread  a  knowl- 
edge and  faith  of  the  new  and  living  way,  and  went  to  their  re- 
ward ;  and  in  every  subsequent  age  the  work  of  disseminating 
the  truth  has  been  faithfully  carried  forward ;  and  yet  to  say 
that  of  the  more  than  a  thousand  million  souls  that  now  inhab- 
it the  globe  one  million  are  vitally  and  experimentally  Chris- 
tians would  be  an  extravagant  estimate.  To  say  that  there 
are  more  nominally  Christian  nations  than  heathen  nations 
would  be  to  outrage  the  facts.  If  you  were  to  put  a  shadow 
on  tlie  globe  where  tliere  is  heathenism,  and  light  Avhere 
thei'e  is  Christianity,  even  in  its  nominal  forms,  the  shadow 
to  the  light  would  be  as  the  little  finger  to  the  rest  of  the 
hand.  There  have  been  six  thousand  years — six  thousand 
years  of  dispensation ;  six  thousand  years  of  advancement ; 
six  thousand  years  of  history ;  six  thousand  years  of  succes- 
sive civilization — and  it  seems  as  though  the  parts  of  the 
globe  where  there  is  civilization,  compared  with  the  whole 
globe,  were  as  the  wick  or  flame  of  a  torch  to  the  torch  itself. 

Consider,  too,  what  have  been  the  characteristic  develop- 
ments of  the  race  in  cruelty,  in  deceit,  in  selfishness,  in  wars, 
and  in  revolutions.  I  know  that  there  has  been  much  incar- 
nated justice  in  laws  and  institutions ;  I  know  that  there  has 


The  Long-suffeeing  of  God.  211 

been  a  great  deal  of  domesticity  even  in  jungles  and  barbaric 
wildernesses  ;  but,  after  all,  of  the  things  that  have  had  rec- 
ord in  the  world,  of  the  many  sources  of  violence,  injustice, 
and  cruelty,  I  do  not  know  of  any  thing  else  that  is  so  cruel 
as  man.  Lions  are  not;  tigers  are  not;  wolves  are  not;  ser- 
pents are  not.  A  lion  was  made  to  eat  meat ;  but  he  never 
kills  any  more  than  he  wants,  and  he  does  not  kill  that  for 
cruelty.  He  makes  use  of  his  power  simply  for  the  purvey- 
ance of  his  own  necessities.  It  is  only  man  that  revenges. 
It  is  only  man  that  studies  cruelty,  and  makes  it  exquisite, 
and  prolongs  it,  and  carries  it  out  with  appliances  of  art. 
From  the  despot  on  the  throne  to  the  despot  of  the  house- 
hold, all  men  alike  carry  vengeance,  bitterness,  wrath,  hurt- 
fulness,  as  characteristic  of  the  race.  There  has  been  enough 
blood  shed  by  the  hand  of  man  to  bear  up  the  navies  of  the 
globe.  When  a  lion  sheds  blood,  he  laps  it  up.  When  man 
sheds  blood,  he  does  not  eat  it ;  it  falls  to  the  ground,  and 
cries  for  vengeance.  The  earth  has  been  wet  with  blood. 
Tears  have  flowed  like  rivers.  This  has  not  occurred  merely 
once  in  some  great  cycle.  It  has  been  the  constant  history 
of  mankind.  Time  has  walked  ankle-deep  in  tears  and  blood 
on  the  face  of  the  earth  from  the  beginning. 

And  yet  God  has  been  the  governor  of  this  world — of  this 
race.  One  would  think  that  he  would  have  swejDt  it  away, 
as  with  a  flood  he  swept  away  the  earlier  race.  One  would 
suppose  that  he  would  have  burned  up  the  globe,  and  stop- 
ped the  nefarious  history.  His  patience,  his  forbearance,  his 
hopefulness,  has  saved  it  until  this  day. 

Consider  the  progress  of  Christianity  among  men.  How 
long  is  it  since  that  divine  spectacle  of  time,  the  innocent  and 
sacred  One  lifted  upon  Calvary,  was  beheld  ?  Eighteen  hun- 
dred years  and  more  have  passed  since  then.  There  was  no 
such  spectacle  before,  there  has  been  no  such  spectacle  since, 
and  there  never  shall  be  such  a  sjjectacle  again.  With  this 
end  of  sacrifices,  what  an  evolution  there  was  of  truth ;  and 
what  an  outpouring  there  now  is  of  divine  efiulgent  influ- 


212  The  Long-suffering  of  God. 

ences !  How,  for  eighteen  hundred  years,  this  Gospel  has 
been  going  forth,  ministered  by  I  know  not  what  successions 
of  faithful  men !  One  would  suppose  that  the  earth  would 
at  least  have  come  to  twilight ;  but,  alas !  how  many  Chris- 
tian nations  are  there  on  the  globe  ?  and  what  is  the  condi- 
tion even  of  those  that  profess  to  be  Christians  ? 

Consider  the  present  condition  of  the  world.  What  is 
the  condition  of  the  continent  of  Asia  ?  It  is  the  scene  of 
barbaric  life,  and  the  repository  of  rude  and  coarse  material- 
ity. You  might  sink  Asia,  and  the  world  would  lose  no  se- 
crets of  civilization,  no  valuable  institutions,  and  no  moral 
treasures. 

What  is  the  condition  of  Africa?  It  is  enveloped  in  per- 
petual night.  It  is  one  of  the  noblest  continents  on  the 
globe ;  one  of  the  richest  in  material  wealth,  and  in  the  ele- 
ments of  the  growth  of  races ;  and  yet,  from  end  to  end,  it  is 
populated  by  a  people  that  are  susceptible  of  much,  but  that 
develop  almost  nothing.  It  is  a  vast  haunt  of  op2:)ression, 
and  ignorance,  and  abomination,  and  wickedness.  Here  and 
there  is  the  merest  glimpse  of  light,  just  on  the  edges  of  it ; 
but  it  may  be  said  of  Africa,  comprehensively,  that  it  is  one 
vast  cavernous  den  of  iniquity. 

What  is  the  condition  of  Europe  ?  Look  at  Italy,  the  the- 
atre of  so  much  past  civilization ;  the  home  of  art ;  the  cen- 
tre of  the  world's  proudest  talents  ;  the  place  from  whence 
we  have  derived  so  much  of  law  and  statesmanship,  Italy 
is  scarcely  yet  wrested  from  the  robber's  hand.  Rome,  even 
now,  smokes  with  abomination  before  God.  It  is  still  cursed 
by  despotism.  The  people  in  other  parts  of  Italy  are  just 
gathering  themselves  on  their  feet,  and  standing  up  as  men. 
Look  at  the  German  empire.  What  is  the  condition  of  Aus- 
tria and  Hungary,  with  their  discontented  and  uprising  peo- 
ple? Look  at  France  and  England,  jealous  of  each  other,  am- 
bitious of  power  far  beyond  their  potency  to  maintain,  and  at- 
tempting to  revolutionize  the  globe.  Avarice  is  their  heart, 
and  the  sword  is  their  law.     Protestant  England  and  Catho- 


The  Long-suffering  of  God.  213 

lie  France  are  leagued  together  for — what  ?  Empire.  Com- 
merce is  the  Gospel  that  rules  in  France,  and  rules  in  En- 
gland, and  rules  all  over  the  world. 

Is  our  own  country  an  exception?  What  is  our  present 
condition?  What  has  been  our  condition  for  the  last  fifty 
years  ?  What  has  been  the  direction  in  which  we  have  tend- 
ed ?  Our  five  hundred  thousand  bondmen  have  become  four 
million.  The  South,  besotted,  degraded,  and  barbarized  by 
the  increase  of  the  foul  institution  of  slavery,  has  raised  the 
standard  of  civil  war.  America,  that  was  founded  by  men 
who  fled  from  oppression,  who,  while  on  the  stormy  deep, 
signed  the  first  written  compact  of  liberty,  and  who  sufiered 
and  became  heroic  by  their  fidelity  to  higher  principles  of 
freedom — America,  whose  songs  and  whose  vaunts  of  liberty 
have  filled  the  ear  of  the  world  for  a  hundred  years — Ameri- 
ca is  engaged  in  a  bitter  civil  war,  and  for  no  other  reason 
than  because  half  the  nation  is  bent  upon  establishing  on 
firmer  foundations  the  vilest  bondage  that  ever  dehumanized 
any  land ! 

Such  is  the  condition  of  the  nations  of  the  earth.  Such  are 
the  things  that  are  taking  place  in  those  nations  more  than 
eighteen  hundred  years  after  the  advent  of  Christ  into  the 
world.  And  God  sits  patiently  and  sees  the  everlasting  roll 
of  depravity  by  which  mankmd  are  afiected.  He  beholds 
the  dungeons  and  the  wildernesses.  He  sees  the  heart-throes. 
He  hears  the  groans  and  the  sighs.  He  knows  the  desola- 
tions and  the  abominations.  The  earth  is  bound  up  in  sin, 
and  God  yet  bears  it  and  carries  those  that  dwell  thereon  in 
his  bosom.  Think  what  must  be  the  long-sufiering  and  pa- 
tience of  such  a  Being  ! 

There  are  two  philosophies  of  the  divine  nature,  and  it 
makes  much  difierence  in  our  estimate  of  the  patience  of  God 
which  we  adopt.  One  makes  God  inaccessible  to  sufiering. 
False  ideas  of  perfection  cause  them  to  lift  him  above  suf- 
fering, as  if  it  were  a  weakness.  But  this,  in  fact,  either 
takes  away  personality,  making  God  an  abstraction,  or  it 


214  The  Long-suffering  of  God. 

represents  him  as  so  devoid  of  sensibility  that  no  man  can 
yearn  after  or  love  him.  In  order  to  raise  God  into  incon- 
ceivable perfectness,  philosophers  have  clothed  him  with  such 
impassive  traits  that  no  nian  could  desire  hinu 

The  other  view,  which  is  the  scriptural  view,  clothes  God 
with  sensibilities,  not  only  as  quick  as  human  sensibilities, 
but  vastly  more  acute,  and  deep,  and  strong  than  men's. 
Love,  and  sympathy,  and  pity  are  not  less  real  in  God  than  in 
man,  but  more  real.  God  is  not  only  as  much  as  man,  but 
more  than  he  in  every  thing  that  is  excellent.  There  is  no 
such  indignation  at  dishonor,  and  meanness,  and  wickedness 
as  that  which  dwells  in  the  bosom  of  God.  It  is  said  to  hum 
to  the  lowest  hell.  Bring  before  any  truly  noble  man  some  in- 
effable meanness,  not  against  himself,  but  against  a  helpless 
one,  and  he  knows  what  that  expression  means.  He  is  so  af- 
fronted by  the  outrage  that  his  whole  better  nature  is  stirred 
up  within  him.  And  if  man,  who  is  yet  selfish,  and  drawn 
toward  the  earth,  can  be  so  aroused  at  the  sight  of  such 
things,  what  must  be  the  tides  that  move  through  the  heart 
of  God  at  the  sight  of  the  same  things  !  If  God  be  one  that 
says, "  I  saw  the  end  from  the  beginning ;  I  know  that  all  is 
going  right,  and  I  will  not  trouble  myself  with  these  mat- 
ters," we  might  as  well  have  no  God,  so  far  as  his  influence 
upon  us  is  concerned ;  but  if  he  be  a  Father  who  declares 
that  there  is  not  a  thing  that  pertains  to  our  welfare  of 
which  he  is  not  cognizant  and  which  he  does  not  control, 
then  what  must  be  the  nature  of  the  experience  of  the  divine 
mind,  in  the  world-long  administration  of  his  government, 
over  such  a  race  as  this  ! 

Thus  much  in  regard  to  collective  man.  There  is  an  indi- 
vidual history,  likewise,  which  we  shall  now  approach  perhaps 
\\4th  more  conscious  realization.  Every  one  of  us  has  had  a 
life  marked  by  a  long  course  of  divine  forbearance,  for  which 
no  motive  can  be  assigned  but  love.  Consider  that  slow  ev- 
olution and  education  through  which  many  of  us  have  been 
passing  for  scores  of  years.    "We  are  not  to  think  of  our  strug- 


The  Long-suffeking  of  God.  215 

gles  in  life,  and  of  our  development,  in  the  light  of  our  own 
endeavors.  There  is  not  one  of  us  that  has  not  been  a  child, 
under  the  government  of  a  father ;  and  God's  heart  and  intel- 
ligence have  gone  with  us  from  the  cradle  to  the  present  hour. 
All  the  instruction  and  training  which  we  have  received  he 
has  watched,  I  will  not  say  with  the  sensibility  and  love  of 
an  earthly  parent,  but  with  a  love  and  sensibility  transcend- 
ently  above  any  degree  of  these  qualities  that  an  earthly  pa- 
rent is  capable  of  experiencing. 

Consider  the  partial  and  limited  moral  result  that  has  been 
secured  by  our  education.  Consider  that  it  has  been  mark- 
ed by  years  of  indifference,  and  worldliness,  and  resistance, 
and  uselessness,  and  even,  perhaps,  great  and  outbreaking 
wickedness.  Who  that  remembers  his  life,  or  even  a  part  of 
it,  is  not  impressed  with  its  obliquities  ?  And  if  a  man  ana- 
lyzes his  life,  he  will  be  still  more  impressed  with  these  ob- 
liquities. Take  the  history  of  your  reason.  Ask  yourself, 
"  To  what  purpose  have  I  employed  the  powers  of  my  under- 
standing?" What  can  you  show  as  the  fruits  of  that  royal 
faculty  ?  If  you  were  a  husbandman,  and  were  put  in  charge 
of  a  piece  of  land,  you  would  keep  a  record  of  the  harvests, 
and  could  give  an  account  of  your  stewardship.  Now  God 
has  given  you  that  ample  field  of  intelligence,  and  what  can 
you  show  as  the  result  of  the  twenty,  or  thirty,  or  forty,  or 
fifty,  or  sixty  years  that  you  have  had  the  tillage  of  it  ? 
What  capacity  for  working  out  blessings  for  ourselves  and 
others  has  God  given  us  in  our  affections  ?  Have  we  wrought 
out  through  them  a  result  at  all  answering  to  that  capacity? 
Although,  in  looking  back  upon  our  career,  we  can  find  some 
things  that  afford  vis  satisfaction,  has  not  our  life  been  like  a 
tree  in  an  orchard  that  bears  here  and  there  an  apple,  but 
that  on  many  of  its  branches  has  nothing  but  leaves  ?  Has 
it  not  been  like  a  vine  that  grows  rampant  and  strong,  and  is 
plentiful  in  wood,  but  penurious  in  fruit  ? 

Consider,  when  called  of  God,  and  effectually  called,  how 
our  Christian  life  has  begun  in  doubt,  and  proceeded  irregu- 


216  The  Long-suffering  of  God. 

larly,  and  gone  on  unproductively ;  and  consider  how  void, 
in  many  respects,  it  has  been  down  to  this  hour. 

But,  more  particularly,  let  every  man  consider  how  much 
of  the  period  of  his  youth  was  utterly  thrown  away.  How 
many  of  us  have  entered  and  gone  forward  into  manhood  in 
violation  of  the  divine  commands,  and  against  our  own  con- 
science and  judgment.  There  are  none  of  us  who,  if  we 
should  conscientiously  pass  judgment  ujDon  the  life  that  we 
have  led,  would  not  be  obliged  to  acknowledge  that  in  many 
things  we  have  violated,  every  day,  our  own  sense  of  right 
and  duty.  A  faithful  conscience  will  bear  witness  that  in  our 
past  history  we  have  continually  gone  contrary  to  what  we 
knew  to  be  in  accordance  with  moral  rectitude.  "We  have 
lived  imperfect  and  guilty  lives.  To  us  they  are  forgotten 
and  gone,  but  to  God  they  are  neither  gone  nor  forgotten. 
They  are  written  in  his  eternal  remembrance.  And  he  has 
had  to  bear  and  forbear  with  them,  although  he  has  seen 
them  to  be  a  long  record  of  violations  of  our  own  light  and 
knowledge,  and  of  his  law  and  love. 

Consider  how  many  visitations  of  God's  Spirit  we  have  re- 
sisted, how  many  examples  we  have  disregarded,  how  many 
calls  we  have  neglected,  and  how  many  divine  influences  we 
have  withstood.  By  far  the  largest  number  of  us  have  had 
pious  parents.  The  majority  of  us  were  brought  up,  literal- 
ly, "  in  the  nurture  and  admonition  of  the  Lord ;"  and  there 
are  many  of  us  who  for  long  years  were  made  conscious  of 
the  strivings  of  God's  Spirit  with  us.  Our  thoughts  and  feel- 
ings have  been  leavened.  Fear  and  yearnings  have  wrought 
within  us.  Conscience  has  rebuked  us.  The  divine  influ- 
ence has  fallen  upon  us  like  heat  upon  summer  soils.  Our 
souls  have  been  striven  with  in  a  thousand  ways.  Many  of 
us  have  come  down  to  this  time  having  derived  little  or  no 
profit  from  the  experience  through  which  we  have  been  call- 
ed to  pass,  and  many  of  us  have  been  growing  harder  and 
harder. 

Consider  our  perjuries — for  I  can  not  call  them  by  any 


The  Long-suffering  of  God.  217 

other  name.  When  you  were  prostrated  by  sickness,  you 
made  the  most  solemn  vow  that  if  God  would  spare  you,  you 
would  give  the  remainder  of  your  days  to  his  service.  He 
heard  you,  and  complied  with  your  desire  ;  and  you  returned 
to  health  only  to  dishonor  the  past,  and  forget  the  vow  that 
you  had  made,  and  enter  upon  a  new  lease  of  self-indulgence. 
Consider  how,  when  troubles  came  like  armed  men  upon  you, 
and  your  conscience  bore  witness  against  you,  and  the  sense 
of  your  wickedness  overwhelmed  you,  you  promised  to  be 
faithful  to  God  if  he  would  relieve  you.  He  relieved  you, 
and  you  broke  your  promise.  You  were  in  difficulty ;  your 
wrong  conduct  was  culminating;  it  was  fast  bringing  you 
toward  ruin  and  disgrace ;  and  you  prayed  to  God,  saying, 
"  I  know  my  sins ;  save  me,  deliver  me  from  disaster  this 
time,  and  I  will  devote  my  life  to  serving  thee  in  the  future ;" 
and  you  perjured  yourself.  Our  lives  are  full  of  promises 
that  are  never  kept.  We  have  not  only  made  resolutions 
and  broken  them,  but  we  have  made  the  most  sacred  prom- 
ises that  the  heart  can  fashion  or  that  the  lips  can  express, 
and  broken  them  scores  and  scores  of  times ;  and  yet  God 
is  not  tired  of  us. 

Go  back  and  recount  the  Sabbaths  that  have  dawned  upon 
you  with  sweet  influences.  I  wovild  not  have  my  memory 
of  the  Sabbaths  that  have  come  to  me  taken  away.  They 
have  been  the  sweetest  days  of  my  life,  as  I  look  back  upon 
them.  Although  in  my  childhood  on  the  Sabbath  the  lazy- 
footed  sun  refused  to  go  down,  and  I  was  impatient  to  have 
the  day  pass,  yet,  when  I  recall  its  scenes,  the  memory  of  it 
is  peculiarly  pleasing.  Of  a  Sabbath  afternoon  the  chestnut- 
hill,  the  pastures  shimmering  in  the  sun,  the  indolent  flocks 
moving  about  over  them.  Mount  Tom  in  the  distance,  the 
trees  in  the  fields,  and  the  sounds  that  filled  the  air — how 
wondrously  did  these  and  many  other  things  twine  together 
to  work  a  heavenly  influence  upon  my  mind !  On  those  Sab- 
bath evenings,  when  all  were  away  from  home  but  me,  and  I 
sat  in  the  door  of  my  father's  kitchen,  and  listened  to  the  old 


218  The  Long-suffering  of  God. 

clock  and  the  crickets,  and  cried,  and  did  not  know  what  was 
the  matter,  the  spirit  of  the  Sabbath  fell  on  me  with  sweet 
and  sacred  influence. 

Do  not  you  remember  the  village  burying-ground  ?  Did 
you  never  walk  there  on  a  Sabbath-day  ?  And  while  gazing 
upon  the  glittering  white  marble  that  stood  over  the  dust  of 
those  that  had  been  dear  to  you,  have  you  never  had  thoughts 
that  seemed  to  swing  you  out  of  mortal  life,  and  almost  into 
the  spirit  land  ?  Do  you  not  remember  those  solemn  funer- 
al days,  when  some  companion  was  borne  to  his  long  home, 
and  you  followed,  ignorant  of  the  meaning  of  what  you  be- 
held, and  yet  agitated  by  the  strange  scene  ? 

Go  back  through  your  Sabbaths.  See  how  many  things 
they  have  brought  to  you.  See  how  near  they  have  car- 
ried you  to  the  verge  of  the  sj)iritual  realm.  See  how  they 
have  waked  up  your  affections,  sweetened  your  heart,  and 
roused  your  conscience.  Call  to  mind  the  privilege  which 
the  Sabbath  has  afforded  you  in  the  sanctuary.  Remember 
the  teachings,  and  chantings,  and  singings  that  you  have  en- 
joyed at  the  house  of  God.  Remember  those  Sabbaths  when 
your  companions  made  a  profession  of  their  faith  in  Christ, 
and  sat  around  the  board,  and  partook  of  the  emblems  of  the 
Savior's  dying  love,  and  your  heart  said,  "  I  would  give  all 
that  I  have  if  I  could  sit  with  them."  Remember  the  Sab- 
bath-days when  you  have  looked  upon  the  joy  of  some  poor 
but  faithful  worshiper  of  God,  and  said  to  yourself,  "  I  would 
give  all  that  I  possess,  and  all  my  prospects  of  success  in  this 
life,  if  I  could  only  be  in  that  man's  place." 

Such  has  been  your  experience  of  the  Sabbath ;  and  yet 
many  of  you  have  gone  through  tens,  and  hundreds,  and 
thousands  of  them,  and  many  of  them  have  been  revival  Sab- 
baths, on  which  the  great  congregation  was  moved  and 
shaken  as  by  a  mighty  wind,  and  you  have  gone  through 
them  all,  and  come  out  no  better,  if  not  worse,  than  you  were 
in  the  beginning. 

Oh !  I  should  think  God  would  be  very  tired  of  his  work 


The  Long-suffering  of  God.  219 

with  us.  There  is  scarcely  a  week  in  which  I  do  not  say  to 
myself,  "  I  wonder  that  God  does  not  get  tired  of  me."  This 
untiring  patience  of  God  is  to  me  the  most  astonishing  of  all 
things.  Neither  his  wisdom,  nor  his  power,  nor  his  purity, 
seems  to  me  so  wonderful  as  that.  There  is  an  inevitable- 
ness  in  these  things.  But  ah  !  nothing  is  so  voluntary  as  pa- 
tience. Not  letting  go  men  that  deserve  to  be  let  go ;  not 
giving  up  men  that  deserve  to  be  given  up ;  holding  men 
that  have  forfeited  all  claim  upon  the  divine  mercy,  through 
long  periods  of  mercy — this  is  wonderful.  I  can  understand 
every  thing  better  than  God's  patience. 

There  are  many  of  us  who  have  had  still  more  peculiar 
sparings  than  these.  I  suppose  that  some  of  you  recollect 
being  carried,  in  your  youth,  down  in  ways  of  depravity  till  it 
seemed  as  though  there  was  but  a  hair's  breadth  between  yon 
and  utter  destruction.  I  j)resume  that  many  of  you  say,  "  I 
do  not  know  why  I  am  not  in  the  Five  Points  to-night." 
You  and  I  are  not  any  better  than  some  are  that  have  been 
there.  There  are  baptized  women  in  those  purlieus  of  dam- 
nation. 'Wliy  are  they  there,  and  you  here  ?  You  remember 
the  time  when  you  were  carried  to  the  very  verge  of  the 
precipice,  and,  you  can  not  tell  why,  somehow  or  other,  you 
bore  oif  and  took  another  course,  while  they  went  on  and 
over.  I  suppose  that  many  of  you  can  recollect  when  the 
temptation  to  lying  and  knavery  had  almost  fastened  itself 
upon  you  as  a  habit,  and  when  you  were  brought  to  a  jjomt 
where  the  chances  were  about  as  many  that  you  would  go 
down  and  become  a  liar  and  a  knave,  as  that  you  would  re- 
form and  be  an  honest  man.  When  many  went  down  the 
road  of  license,  and  were  overthrown,  you  were  recovered. 
Is  it  not  strange  why  some  do  not  come  back  that  do  not, 
and  why  some  come  back  that  do,  from  lives  of  license  and 
of  evil  pleasure  ?  One  would  think  that  the  children  of  such 
godly  parents  as  we  sometimes  see,  when  led  astray,  would 
be  restored  sooner  than  the  children  of  godless  parents ;  but 
such  is  not  always  the  case.     Sometimes  the  unprayed-for 


220  The  Long-suffering  of  God. 

children  come  back,  and  the  prayed-for  ones  do  not  seem  to 
come  back. 

Some  of  you  have  doubtless  been  on  the  way  of  intemper- 
ance, and  escaped,  and  but  just  escaped,  as  a  bird  from  the 
snare  of  a  fowler.  When  a  man  has  been  an  intemperate 
man,  and  has  gained  his  equilibrium,  and  fairly  escaped,  he 
may  say,  "  I  have  been  to  hell,  and  God  has  brought  me  back 
again."  I  really  think  that  if  your  spirit  were  hurled  through 
the  murky  air  of  the  dark  abyss,  and  some  angel  should  fly 
down,  saying, "  God  has  had  mercy  on  your  spirit,  and  sent 
me  to  rescue  you,"  and  should  lift  you  up  again,  it  would  not 
be  more  marvelous  than  for  a  man  that  has  been  in  the  jaws 
of  intemperance  to  regain  his  sanity,  and  strength,  and  virtu- 
ous resolution.  Are  there  none  of  you  who,  in  their  inward 
consciousness,  can  say, "  I  went  farther  than  I  meant  to ;  I 
came  to  the  very  verge  of  the  pit  of  perdition,  and  God  saved 
me,  and  brought  me  back  ?" 

There  are  some  here,  I  suppose,  that  have  been  almost 
around  the  world,  on  sea  and  land,  in  all  climates,  and  among 
all  sorts  of  companions,  and  sinned  with  a  high  hand;  and 
God  has  revolved  the  wheel,  and  you  have  come  back,  you 
have  been  converted,  and  you  are  now  walking  in  ways  of 
pleasantness  and  peace.  Is  it  not  wonderful  that  you  have 
been  thus  spared  ?  But  where  are  those  that  were  with  you  ? 
One  after  another  they  have  come  to  an  untimely  end,  has- 
tened on  by  a  career  of  wickedness  and  crime.  Is  there 
nothing  in  such  a  history  that  ought  to  arrest  a  man's  atten- 
tion, and  cause  him  to  mark  the  sparing  mercy  of  God  ? 

Consider,  you  that  are  living  in  sin,  that  you  are  not  mere- 
ly resisting  your  duty,  and  the  requirements  of  God's  law, 
but  your  guilt  is  heinous,  from  the  fact  that  you  have  been 
dealt  with  so  leniently,  and  for  so  long  a  period.  You  can 
not  realize  the  extent  to  which  this  circumstance  aggravates 
your  sin  without  being  condemned  by  your  own  conscience. 
And  if  your  conscience  condemns  you,  how  much  more  must 
God  condemn  you,  who  is  greater  than  your  conscience. 


The  Long-suffering  of  God.  221 

Consider,  too,  the  wanton  sacrifices,  and  the  degree  of  mor- 
al turpitude,  of  one  that  can  go  down  against  education; 
against  parental  example ;  against  sympathy  with  Christian 
companions;  against  the  whole  array  of  the  means  of  grace; 
against  all  Sabbath  and  sanctuary  privileges ;  against  special 
divine  workings  ;  against  God's  providences ;  and  especially 
against  the  long-suffering  of  God,  that  should  of  itself  lead 
you  to  reijentance.  What  a  funeral  march,  what  a  march  to 
perdition,  is  the  life  of  some  men. 

Under  such  a  dispensation,  nothing  can  prevent  any  man 
that  wants  to  be  saved  from  being  saved.  Many  men  liave 
thought,  "  I  would  try  to  be  a  Christian  if  I  thought  I  could 
succeed."  There  are  more  chances  of  your  succeeding  in  a 
Christian  life  than  in  agriculture,  or  mechanics,  or  commerce. 
When  a  man  attempts  to  build  himself  up  in  commerce,  or 
mechanics,  or  agriculture,  there  are  many  things  that  may 
occur  to  prevent  his  success ;  but  when  a  man  attempts  to 
live  a  Christian  life,  the  long-suffering  of  the  Lord  God  Al- 
mighty is  a  guarantee  against  his  failure.  The  assurances 
under  the  divine  administration  of  mercy  are  such  that  no 
man  meed  despair  of  success  in  trying  to  be  a  Christian. 

Even  the  chief  of  sinners  may  hope  for  mercy  from  so 
patient  a  Being.  Have  you  given  yourself  up  long  ago  ? 
My  dear  friend,  God  has  not  given  you  up.  You  may  have 
said,  "  I  am  a  reprobate,  and  there  is  no  use  of  my  trying  to 
reform;  let  the  young  take  warning  from  my  example." 
Perhaps  God  has  spared  you  on  purpose  to  make  you  a  mon- 
ument of  his  grace.  Let  your  examjDle  be  a  monument  of 
grace,  and  not  a  monument  of  warnmg.  Have  men  given 
you  up  ?  God  is  more  patient  than  men.  Have  even  your 
father  and  mother  forsaken  you?  When  your  father  and 
mother  forsake  you,  then  the  Lord  will  take  you  up.  Have 
your  companions  become  tired  of  you,  and  forsworn  your  ac- 
quaintance ?  God  is  not  tired  of  you.  There  is  not  a  man 
so  steeped  in  guilt,  so  debased  by  crime,  so  pertinacious  in 
rebellion,  or  so  thoroughly  clothed  in  the  garment  of  sin,  that 


222  The  Long-suffeking  of  God. 

there  is  not  hope  for  him,  and  mercy  for  him.  Not  that  you 
deserve  any  thing,  or  are  entitled  to  any  thing ;  but  you  have 
a  God  that  is  long-suffering,  that  waits  to  be  gracious,  and 
that  says  to  every  man, "  Though  your  sins  be  as  scarlet,  I 
will  make  them  white  as  snow."  There  is  no  impossibility 
with  God.     Only  hope  and  try,  and  God  will  help  you. 

I  ask  you  to  remember  this  view  of  God  when  you  think 
that  to  be  called  to  religious  life  is  a  dismal  calling.  Is  it  a 
sad  thing  to  be  subject  to  the  control  of  such  a  One  ?  He 
came  into  this  world  for  your  sake.  In  the  person  of  his  Son 
incarnated,  he  suffered  for  you.  He  laid  down  his  life  in  your 
behalf.  He  made  expiation  for  the  sins  of  each  and  every 
one  of  us.  And  now,  though  he  has  ascended  into  heaven, 
he  never  forgets  us.  He  is  a  high -priest  that  is  touched 
with  the  feeling  of  our  infirmities ;  and  to-day  Jesus  Christ 
reigns  for  the  sake  of  bringing  us  home  to  glory. 

Can  not  you  trust,  and  love,  and  serve  such  a  Savior? 
What  is  your  life  worth  if  it  is  not  founded  in  him  ?  No 
man  can  be  said  to  have  life  who  has  not  a  hope  of  eternal 
life.  No  man  can  be  said  to  have  joy  who  has  not  the  begin- 
ning of  everlasting  joy. 

Now,  by  the  mercy  of  God,  by  the  long-suffering  of  God, 
by  the  kindness  of  God,  I  beseech  every  one  of  you  to  turn 
from  evil  and  take  hold  upon  good,  with  repentance,  with 
confession,  with  firm  choice,  and  with  determination.  Begin 
to  live  a  life  of  religious  faith  and  of  Christian  hope. 


X. 


€\it  y>iiVnnt  of  (Ini. 


Preached  in  Plymouth  Church,  Brooklyn,  Sabbath  morning, 
April  iph,  1864. 


The  Patience  of  God, 


""Who  is  a  God  like  unto  thee,  that  pardoneth  iniquity,  and  passeth  by  the 
transgression  of  the  remnant  of  his  heritage  ?  He  retaineth  not  his  an- 
ger forever,  because  he  delighteth  in  mercy." — Mic,  vii.,  18. 

Before  men  conclude  to  seal  up  the  Old  Testament  and 
lay  it  aside  as  a  document  of  former  ages,  no  longer  suitable 
to  the  advanced  moral  condition  and  intelligence  of  the 
world,  they  should  consider  a  little  its  contents.  It  is  true 
that  the  record  of  the  Levitical  system  of  worship  and  the 
Jewish  civil  government  has  chiefly  only  a  historic  value.  It 
is  true  that  the  genealogical  tables  are  no  longer  of  any  spe- 
cial importance  to  the  world.  They  are  dead  to  us.  It  is 
true  that  much  that  is  in  the  Prophets  Avas  special  to  the  age 
to  which  it  was  addressed,  and  has  to  us  a  secondary  value. 
But  while  the  elements  that  were  local  and  special  to  one 
people  and  one  age  no  longer  have  to  us  the  importance 
which  they  had  to  them  to  whom  they  were  first  delivered, 
yet  other  portions  contain  universal  truths — that  is,  truths 
that  belong  to  men  every  where  and  in  every  age.  Love, 
and  its  essential  wants,  joys,  sorrows,  the  literature  of  those 
sorrows,  universal  afflictions,  remorse,  yearnings  after  good- 
ness— in  short,  all  the  moral  sentiments  and  all  the  natural  af- 
fections are  the  same  under  all  governments,  under  all  laws, 
and  in  every  age;  and  the  Scriptures  that  relate  to  these 
things  are  perennial.  They  never  grow  old.  They  are  not 
relative  to  any  one  age.  They  are  alike  to  all.  If  you  cast 
into  oblivion  the  Psalms  of  David,  you  throw  away  the  best 

II.— P 


226  The  Patience  of  God. 

literature  of  the  feelings  that  has  ever  appeared  in  human 
language ;  and  whence  can  you  replace  it  ?  If  you  take  out 
of  our  language  those  Psalms,  and  the  meditations  which  they 
have  inspired,  what  will  be  left  to  express  the  deepest  and 
the  most  exalted  of  all  the  feelings  which  man  can  entertain  ? 
The  noblest  application  of  moral  principles  to  human  affairs 
are  to  be  found  in  the  Prophets.  Ever  since  good  men  have 
hated  evil,  and  sought  to  reform  and  ennoble  the  state,  they 
have  found  their  inspiration  in  the  Prophets.  If  the  Gospel 
of  Christ  gave  to  the  world  a  new  radical  doctrine  of  the 
worth  of  man  as  an  individual  creature,  the  Prophets  gave 
to  the  world  the  noblest  inspirations  for  just  government 
and  pure  administration  in  human  affairs. 

But  there  is  one  vein  that  is  so  far  above  any  which  I  have 
mentioned  that  it  seems  scarcely  worth  while  to  linger  upon 
these  details,  important  as  they  are.  Let  one  ask  himself 
where  he  will  find  a  substitute  for  that  sublime  conception 
of  God  that  pervades  the  Old  Testament.  Earlier  than  all 
others  it  stood  forth.  Successive  ages  have  corroborated  it, 
but  have  added  nothing  to  it.  The  sublime  transactions  of 
the  New  Testament  have  been  instances  under  it  and  exem- 
plifications of  it ;  but  there  are  not,  even  in  the  New  Testa- 
ment, any  descriptions  of  God  that  in  majesty,  and  com- 
pleteness, and  symmetry,  and  harmony,  go  beyond  and  high- 
er than  those  contained  in  the  oldest  parts  of  the  Old  Testa- 
ment. Let  me  read  you  that  which  Ave  can  never  read 
enough — the  description  wliich  was  given  to  Moses : 

"The  Lord  descended  in  the  cloud,  and  stood  with  him 
there,  and  proclaimed  the  name  of  the  Lord.  And  tlie  Lord 
passed  by  him,  and  proclaimed,  The  Lord,  The  Lord  God, 
merciful  and  gracious,  long-suffering,  and  abundant  in  good- 
ness and  truth,  keeping  mercy  for  thousands,  forgiving  iniq- 
uity, and  transgression,  and  sin,  and  that  will  by  no  means 
clear  the  guilty ;  visiting  the  iniquity  of  the  fathers  upon  the 
children,  and  upon  the  children's  children,  unto  the  third  and 
to  the  fourth  sreneration." 


The  Patience  of  God.  227 

Where  can  you  find  any  description  of  a  moral  governor 
more  sublime  ?  or  where  any  intimations  of  a  moral  govern- 
ment more  admirable  ?  Our  theologies  scarcely  yet  aspire 
to  deal  with  that  which  was  so  early  and  so  clearly  set  forth. 
Civilizations,  one  after  another,  have  arisen — the  Egyptian, 
which  was  then  in  progress,  the  Assyrian,  the  Grecian,  the 
Roman,  and  the  modern — in  each  and  all  of  which  new  ele- 
ments of  manhood  have  been  evolved ;  but,  with  the  result 
of  them  all  before  you,  go  back  four  hundred  thousand  years, 
and  what  will  you  add,  or  what  subtract  from,  this  sublimest 
description  of  God  ?  It  would  seem  as  if  on  the  morning  of 
the  human  race  God  looked  forth  and  inspired  the  sacred 
penman  to  limn  his  portrait,  which  has  since  overhung  the 
world,  not  a  line  effaced  nor  a  color  grown  dim.  One  by  one 
the  patriarchs  lived  and  died,  and  new  teachers  took  their 
places,  while  holy  men,  and  judges,  and  prophets  came ;  and 
yet  all  sounded  the  same  truth,  beheld  the  same  sublime  Je- 
hovah, and  set  forth,  without  jar  or  discord,  from  end  to  end 
of  the  Old  Testament  Scriptures,  this  very  view  of  God,  first 
good  and  loving,  and  alternatively  just  and  punitive,  which 
Moses  beheld  m  the  desert,  and  which,  with  God's  Word  for 
our  glass,  we  now  begin  to  be  able  to  perceive  in  all  the  as- 
pects of  nature  itself 

One  of  these  divine  elements  comes  before  us  this  morning 
in  the  text  which  w^e  have  chosen,  namely,  God's  great  pa- 
tience with  men,  and  his  spirit  of  forgiveness.  It  is  to  this 
that  I  wish  now  to  call  your  attention.  The  range  of  God's 
patience  is  so  great,  and  the  circumstances  of  it  are  so  differ- 
ent from  our  own  human  experiences,  that  our  chief  difficulty 
in  speaking  of  it  lies  in  its  vastness. 

We  are  to  consider,  in  the  first  place,  in  approaching  this 
subject,  that  our  sin  is  not  so  much  a  violation  of  a  law  that 
lies  outside  of  the  bosom  of  God,  as  it  is  a  disregard  of  the 
feelings  and  nature  of  God  himself  You  will,  by  a  moment's 
reflection,  see  that  there  is  a  marked  distinction  between  per- 
sonal feeling  infringed  upon  and  law  transgressed.    The  mag- 


228  The  Patience  of  God. 

istrate  sits  upon  the  bench,  and  a  culprit  is  brought  before 
him.  There  are  two  ways  in  which  that  culprit  may  be  con- 
sidered as  transgi-essing.  He  may  have  broken  the  law  of 
the  land,  which  the  magistrate  represents  officially,  but  not 
personally.  The  magistrate  regards  him  as  a  culprit,  to  be 
sure.  But  suppose  that,  in  the  exercise  of  truth  and  justice 
by  a  pure  administration  or  decision,  the  magistrate  arouses 
the  anger  of  the  culprit,  and  he  insults  him  to  his  face  and  in 
his  own  court,  is  there  any  difference  between  his  former 
crime,  which  was  the  violation  of  the  law  of  the  land,  and  his 
later  crime,  which  is  an  outrage  upon  the  feeling  of  the  mag- 
istrate, acting  as  a  magistrate  ? 

When  you  employ  men  in  your  affairs,  you  know  that 
there  is  a  distinction  between  the  disregard  of  the  rules  of 
business  and  a  personal  disagreement  with  yourself.  You 
know  that  when  a  man  offends  you  personally  the  provoca- 
tion is  sharper  and  harder  to  be  borne  than  when  he  breaks 
over  stated  rules.  We  know  that  a  child  may  violate  the 
laws  of  morality  as  they  are  established  by  the  Word  of 
God  and  by  the  consent  of  the  community,  that  he  may  vio- 
late the  civil  laws  of  the  land  in  which  he  dwells,  that  he 
may  violate  the  rules  and  i*egulations  of  a  well-ordered  fami- 
ly, and  yet,  though  all  these  courses  of  conduct  are  grievous 
wrongs  which  shock  the  parent,  not  be  as  culpable  as  when  he 
willfully  treads  on  the  feelings  of  the  parent.  There  are  sins 
m  committing  which  the  child  flies,  as  it  were,  against  the 
heart  of  the  father  and  mother,  and  does  not  so  much  violate 
their  command  as  their  living  feeling ;  he  sins  against  law  in 
its  very  sources ;  and  we  all  know  that  this  is  regarded  as 
more  intolerable  and  more  flagrant  than  simply  setting  aside 
and  forgetting  or  transgressing  a  law.  In  other  words,  it  is 
possible  to  break  a  statute — that  is  one  kind  of  transgression. 
It  is  possible,  also,  to  sin  by  directly  striking  against  the  heart 
and  the  feeling — that  is  another  kind  of  transgi-ession,  and 
one  that  is  considered  more  stinging,  more  intolerable,  and 
more  unforgivable  than  any  other. 


The  Patience  of  God.  229 

Now  God  and  his  law  are  one — one  in  such  a  sense  that 
when  we  offend  against  his  moral  law,  we  offend  against  his 
own  personal  feeling.  He  is  not  a  magistrate  for  whom  a  sys- 
tem has  been  framed,  and  to  the  administration  of  which  he 
comes,  under  a  sense  of  justice.  He  is  a  universal  Father, 
administering  according  to  his  own  instincts,  his  own  tastes, 
his  own  affections,  his  own  feelings,  among  his  children. 
God's  law  is  God's  own  very  self,  pervading  the  universe,  and 
our  transgression  is  a  personal  affront  of  God  himself  Just  as 
when  your  taste,  or  your  love,  or  your  conscience  is  violated 
by  the  direct  act  of  another  person  against  yourself,  the  of- 
fense is  greater  than  if  any  exterior  canon  were  broken,  so  it 
is  when  we  violate  the  divine  commands. 

In  this  light,  consider  how  every  man  sins  every  day  of  his 
life,  and  with  every  single  faculty,  against  God's  taste,  against 
his  conscience,  against  his  love,  against  his  kindness — that  is, 
offends  them,  disgusts  them,  if  I  might  so  say.  For,  although 
I  do  not  hold  to  the  doctrine  of  total  depravity,  if  by  that  is 
meant  that  all  men  sin  alike  all  the  time  as  much  as  they  can, 
so  that  every  thing  they  do  is  bad,  I  do  hold  to  the  view 
that  there  is  not  a  single  faculty  that  is  at  work  in  the  human 
mind  that  is  not  an  offender.  There  is  not  a  single  part  or 
power  of  our  nature  with  which  we  have  not  committed  sin, 
and  with  which  we  do  not  commit  it  from  day  to  day.  Every 
single  one  of  all  the  multiplied  faculties  of  the  human  mind  is 
made  the  instrument  of  offense  to  the  feeling  of  God. 

In  many  things  our  actions  in  this  direction  have  become 
tendencies,  and  these  tendencies  have  become  habits,  so  that 
men  transgress  God's  feelings — that  is,  God's  laws — habitu- 
ally and  regularly,  until  there  is  an  organized  and  systematic 
wrong-doing. 

This  is  begun  early,  and  is  continued  through  life,  so  that 
there  are  innumerable  evils,  and  wrongs,  and  insults,  and 
grievous  injuries,  against  God's  feelings,  in  the  history  of  ev- 
ery single  man.  And  it  is  impossible  but  that  God  mvist  pass 
by  transgressions,  as  he  is  represented  as  doing.     "  Who  is  a 


230  The  Patience  of  God. 

God  like  unto  thee,  that  pardoneth  iniquity,  and  passeth  by 
the  transgression  of  the  remnant  of  his  heritage  ?"  There  is 
not  a  wise  parent  in  the  world  that  is  not  obliged  to  pass  by 
a  great  deal  of  the  wrong  which  his  child  does.  It  would 
not  be  wise  administration  in  a  parent  not  to  do  it.  God 
sets  us  the  example.  There  are  thousands  of  things  that 
children  do,  or  say,  or  omit,  which  it  is  not  best  for  the  par- 
ent to  interfere  with.  It  is  best  for  the  parent  not  to  seem 
to  see  many  things  that  he  does  see,  to  pass  by  or  to  be  len- 
ient with  many  things,  and  to  bring  to  bear  discipline  upon 
the  child  only  so  far  as  he  sees  that  the  child  will  be  profited 
by  it,  not  adhering  to  an  abstract  and  absolute  idea  of  jus- 
tice and  of  right.  And  we  are  taught  respecting  God  that 
although  men  sin  against  him  with  every  faculty  of  their 
minds,  and  carry  on  transgression,  I  had  almost  said,  by  the 
necessity  of  their  nature,  continuously,  God  passes  it  by,  and 
does  not  seem  to  heed  it — and  that,  too,  out  of  a  sj)irit  of 
wisdom,  as  well  as  of  infinite  compassion  and  benevolence. 

Consider  that  this  is  the  case  with  each  individual  man, 
and  that  this  is  the  case  with  nations,  and  that  God  is  sur- 
rounded, so  far  as  this  world  is  concerned,  by  myriads  of  be- 
ings every  one  of  whom  must  needs  make  himself  a  burden 
to  him  by  the  violation  of  the  divine  thought,  and  taste, 
and  feeling  —  of  all  that  is  highest,  and  noblest,  and  purest 
—  of  that  which  God  loves  as  his  own  being,  and  by  which 
he  means  to  build  up  the  universe,  and  to  make  the  final 
heaven,  and  the  glorious  paradisiacal  condition !  Men  have 
been  living  in  a  perpetual  violation  of  all  the  thoughts  and 
feelings  of  God's  mind,  generations  have  been,  whole  na- 
tions have  been,  the  race  has  been ;  and  for  thousands  and 
thousands  of  years  God  has  administered  in  the  midst  of 
creatures  on  earth,  every  one  of  whom,  by  every  pulsation 
of  feeling,  has  been  doing  things  unspeakably  ofiensive  and 
inefiably  disgusting  to  him.  Yet  the  race  has  thriven ;  and 
there  have  been  joys,  and  mercies,  and  blessings ;  there  have 
been  reforming  and  stimulating  influences  developed  in  the 


The  Patience  of  God.  231 

world.  And  these  things  explain  what  is  meant  when  in 
the  Old  Testament  God  is  spoken  of  as  being  so  patient — that 
is,  so  long-suffering.  He  suffers  with  men  and  endures  them ; 
and  the  reason  given  is  that  "  he  delighteth  in  mercy."  He 
is  a  being  that  is  so  tender,  so  loving,  so  gentle,  and  so  gra- 
cious, that  though  he  is,  and  has  been  for  ages,  surrounded 
by  those  that  are  playing  uj)on  the  exquisite  divine  sympa- 
thy with  offense,  and  with  conduct  that  is  evil  and  disgustful, 
yet  he  is  so  ineffably  good  that  by  the  love  he  bears  he  is  able 
to  endure  and  to  be  patient  with  this  monstrous  and  universal 
transgression.  "He  delighteth  in  mercy."  That  is,  he  delights 
to  be  kind.  Kindness  harmonizes  with  his  nature.  It  is  the 
strongest  tendency,  the  first  emotion  of  his  mind.  It  deflects 
toward  justice,  but  straightway  it  comes  back  again  to  its 
original  true  feeling  of  mercy  and  love.  The  mother  inter- 
mits her  smiles  to  chastise  the  child,  but  when  the  chastise- 
ment is  over  she  comes  back  again  to  the  feelings  of  mater- 
nal tenderness.  And  so  it  is  with  the  divine  nature.  "  God 
is  love."  And  although  at  times,  in  the  spirit  of  love,  and  for 
the  purposes  of  love,  he  is  severe  and  punitive,  he  returns 
again,  by  the  necessities  of  his  own  nature,  to  loving  kind- 
nesses and  tender  mercies. 

Consider  the  literature  of  this  kindness  as  it  is  repesented 
in  the  Bible — for,  although  I  can  but  glance  at  one  or  two 
passages,  there  is  a  whole  literature  of  the  divine  emotions. 
Consider  God's  readiness  to  forgive  and  to  forget.  "  Thou, 
Lord,  art  good,  and  ready  to  forgive,  and  plenteous  in  mercy 
unto  all  them  that  call  upon  thee."  You  Avill  observe  that  this 
readiness  is  in  marked  contrast  with  men's  conduct,  who  re- 
quire to  be  mollified  toward  an  enemy.  You  will  observe  that 
all  the  way  through  the  Old  Testament,  although  God  is  justly 
offended,  and  indignant  at  man's  conduct,  he  is  represented  as 
the  One  that  needs  no  persuasion.  Men  are  the  ones  that 
need  persuasion.  Now,  when  we  are  grievously  offended — 
not  when  men  do  wrong  against  us  at  points  at  which  we  are 
not  sensitive,  but  when  we  are  touched  in  our  very  personal- 


232  The  Patience  of  God. 

ity,  so  that  we  feel  that  our  honor  is  involved  in  the  wrong- 
doing— we  are  very  reluctant  to  forgive;  but  God  is  de- 
clared to  be  full  of  such  patience,  of  such  gentleness,  and  of 
such  love,  that  he  is  always  ready  to  forgive.  The  impulse 
and  the  motive  are  within  him,  "  He  will  turn  again ;  he  will 
have  compassion  upon  us ;  he  will  subdue  our  iniquities ;  and 
thou  wilt  cast  all  their  sins  into  the  depths  of  the  sea."  I 
have  heard  of  men  that  had  debts  owed  to  them,  that  held 
notes,  and  bonds,  and  mortgages,  and  that,  for  reasons  of  kind- 
ness, burnt  these  evidences  of  the  debts.  They  were  con- 
sumed. They  were  taken  out  of  the  way.  Next  to  burning, 
a  thing  is  lost  and  utterly  gone  if  a  man  sinks  it  into  the 
depths  of  the  sea.  And  we  are  taught  that,  as  when  a  man 
casts  a  thing  overboard,  and  sinks  it  out  of  sight,  so  that  no 
man  can  find  it,  so,  when  God  forgives  a  sin  or  transgression, 
he  so  utterly  forgives  it  that  it  is  gone  from  him  and  is  lost 
forever ! 

He  is  not  only  merciful,  but  he  is  magnanimous,  for  he  not 
only  forgives  utterly,  and  absolutely,  and  thoroughly,  and  is 
eager  and  ready  to  forgive  those  that  transgress  against  his 
feelings,  and  long-suffermg,  and  patience,  but  he  declares  that 
he  will  forget  the  transgression.  Now  there  are  a  great 
many  of  us  who  can  forgive  a  thing,  but  who  can  not  forget 
it.  I  know  there  is  a  phrase  that  says  "Forgive  and  for- 
get;" and  we  do  forgive  and  forget  peccadilloes,  little  trifling 
oflfenses — though  the  forgetting  usually  comes  before  the  for- 
giveness ;  but  there  are  some  things  that  touch  us,  and  goad 
us,  and  of  which  we  say,  "  Christ  forgave,  and  he  says  that  I 
must  forgive,  and  I  will  forgive ;  but  when  they  ask  me  to 
forget^  I  never  can."  Now  forgiveness,  when  the  thing  for- 
given is  not  forgotten — that  is  to  say,  where  it  hangs  in  the 
memory  like  a  painted  portrait,  distinct  in  all  the  features — 
eyes,  nose,  mouth,  and  ears — such  forgiveness  I  should  very 
much  doubt  the  genuineness  of.  It  is  not  according  to  the 
human  mind  to  remember  what  it  has  really  forgiven. 

What  were  the  offenses  which  my  child  committed  ten 


The  Patience  of  God.  233 

years  ago,  and  for  which  I  called  him  to  account  ?  I  recol- 
lect that  there  was  some  discipline  in  my  family  then.  I 
recollect  in  general  that  about  that  time  there  were  improp- 
er acts  that  were  thought  to  be  a  sufficient  cause  for  punish- 
ing the  child,  but  I  have  forgotten  what  they  were.  If  any 
one  of  my  children  should  come  to  me  and  say,  "  Father,  do 
you  recollect  that  when  I  was  six  years  old  such  and  such 
things  happened  ?"  I  should  be  obliged  to  say  that  I  did  not. 
Love  quarrels  are  proverbial  for  their  evanescence.  They 
fade  out  like  the  clouds  from  the  heavens  when  the  wind 
sweeps  them  away  utterly,  so  that  there  is  no  mark  left  to 
show  where  they  have  been.  Do  you  not  see  any  signs  in 
the  human  mind  that  men  know  how,  when  wrongs  have 
been  done,  to  forgive  them  in  such  a  way  that  after  a  little 
the  thing  itself  seems  gone.  Let  me  saw  off  a  branch  from 
one  of  the  trees  that  is  now  budding  in  my  garden,  and  all 
summer  long  there  will  be  an  ugly  scar  where  the  gash  has 
been  made ;  but  by  next  autumn  it  will  be  perfectly  covered 
over  by  the  growing ;  and  by  the  following  autumn  it  will 
be  hidden  out  of  sight ;  and  in  four  or  five  years  there  will 
be  but  a  slight  scar  to  show  where  it  has  been ;  and  in  ten 
or  twenty  years  you  would  never  suspect  that  there  had 
been  an  amputation. 

Trees  know  how  to  overgrow  their  injuries,  and  hide  them; 
and  love  does  not  wait  so  long  as  trees  do;  it  knows  how  to 
throw  out  all  divine  and  beneficent  juices,  as  it  were,  and 
hide  from  sight  the  wrongs  done.  God  says  he  forgives  in 
the  same  way.  He  will  never  again  make  mention,  as  he  de- 
clares in  Ezekiel  to  his  people,  of  their  sins.  He  will  never 
taunt  them  with  them. 

You  do  not  need  to  say  a  word  to  a  man  that  has  done 
you  a  wrong  to  make  him  feel  that  you  remember  it  against 
him.  You  may  say,  "  Let  it  pass,"  and  still  it  will  be  in  your 
power  to  cast  upon  him  a  look  which  he  shall  feel,  and  which 
will  say  more  than  volumes  could  of  that  wrong.  How 
many  times  have  husbands  forgiven  their  wives,  and  wives 


234  The  Patience  of  God. 

their  husbands,  and  parents  their  children,  and  children  each 
other,  when  they  have  committed  any  offense,  only,  in  a  mo- 
ment's anger,  afterward  to  call  that  offense  up  again,  and 
make  it  the  occasion  of  taunting  and  abuse !  But  God  says 
that  he  will  never  make  mention  of  your  transgressions,  that 
he  will  cast  them  into  the  depths  of  the  sea.  There  is  a  roy- 
alty in  the  divine  love  and  patience  such  that  when  God  has 
said  once  of  a  thing, "  It  is  passed,"  it  is  passed ;  it  is  anni- 
hilated ;  it  is  moved  even  beyond  the  memory  that  forgets 
nothing  except  sins  in  his  children.  Every  thing  else  is 
fixed  and  eternized  when  it  falls  upon  the  divine  mind.  But 
offenses  committed  by  us  against  him,  these,  on  our  repent- 
ance and  turning  from  them,  fade  out  of  his  mind.  They 
will  not  hold  their  color,  but  blanch  white  in  the  light  of  the 
sun  of  righteousness. 

Not  only  does  God  not  mention  men's  transgressions,  but 
he  says  explicitly,  "  I  will  forgive  their  iniquity,  and  I  will 
remember  their  sin  no  more."  There  are  sins,  he  declares, 
of  which,  if  you  were  to  go  to  God  and  ask  him  about  them, 
he  would  say,  "  I  have  forgotten  all  about  them.  I  do  not 
know  them.     They  are  gone  from  my  remembrance." 

Consider  what  it  is  to  have  such  a  Being  as  this  at  the 
centre  of  power  and  administration,  forever  seeking  the  good 
of  every  living  creature,  and  living  for  that  very  end ;  not 
sitting  serene,  meditative,  tranquil,  for  the  luxury  of  perfec- 
tion, or  for  self-enjoyment.  The  most  intensely  thoughtful 
and  the  most  intensely  active  of  any  being  in  the  imiverse  is 
God;  and  all  the  power,  and  all  the  majesty  of  his  adminis- 
tration are  for  the  production  of  good  every  where;  and  ev- 
ery violation  of  his  wishes  is  a  violation  of  a  tendency  to- 
ward the  production  of  good.  He  is  never  weary  of  his 
work.  Such  is  our  God,  who,  by  the  whole  personal  influence 
of  his  being,  by  all  his  wishes,  thoughts,  and  feelings,  is  per- 
petually planning  how  to  raise  about  him  in  this  world,  and 
in  other  worlds,  if  there  be  any  that  are  poj^ulated,  those  in- 
telligences that  shall  approach  to  him  in  power  of  thought, 


The  Patience  of  God.  235 

and  moral  excellence,  and  perfectness  of  joy.  This  is  God's 
a.vocation. 

I  bless  God  that  in  this  \rork  he  will  meet  those  that  at- 
tempt to  traverse  it,  and  will  not  clear  the  guilty.  He  makes 
himself  at  once  our  Physician  and  our  Nurse,  and  he  gives 
his  medicine  out  of  his  own  heart  to  those  that  will  be  heal- 
ed of  him.  But  those  that  sin  because  they  love  iniquity, 
and  will  persist  in  it,  that  are  incorrigible,  that  will  not  re- 
pent and  turn  from  wrong — God  will  not  clear  them,  but  will 
show  himself  to  be  their  adversary. 

We  think  it  would  be  wrong  to  attribute  to  God  such  ten- 
der compassion  as  mothers  feel ;  we  shrink  from  transferring 
to  God  the  interior  and  most  exquisite  passages  of  the  his- 
tory of  the  household,  because  it  seems  to  us  that  there  must 
be  incompatibility  between  personal  administration  in  the 
family  and  civil  administration  in  a  state  government.  But 
this  is  wrong ;  for  we  are  to  gain  our  conceptions  of  God 
himself  from  the  noblest  faculties  of  man.  We  are  to  take 
the  best  thoughts  and  the  best  feelings  of  human  beings,  and 
from  these  we  are  to  derive  our  highest  views  of  God ;  and 
in  doing  this,  every  thought,  every  figure,  which  we  apply  to 
him,  inclines  us  to  take  the  family  and  its  experiences  as  the 
source  of  information  respecting  him.  Those  things  that  are 
farthest  from  animal  life,  those  things  that  indicate  the  most 
exquisite  experiences  of  affection  in  the  mother  and  in  the 
father,  are  the  very  ones  which  we  should  transfer  to  God, 
and  should  believe  that  he  possesses. 

In  view,  then,  of  this  brief  statement  concerning  the  char* 
acter  of  God,  and  his  feelings  toward  men  that  are  sinning 
and  trespassing  against  him,  I  remark, 

1.  This  conception  of  God  should  quicken  every  moral 
sensibility,  and  make  a  life  of  sin  distasteful  and  pamful  to 
us.  It  is  one  thing  to  sin  against  a  government,  and  another 
thing  to  sin  against  a  being.  There  are  a  great  many  chil- 
dren that  will  sin  against  the  family  arrangements  who  would 
not  sin  against  their  mother.     The  mother  says, "  My  dear 


236  The  Patience  of  God. 

cliild,  you  know  your  father  has  made  a  law  in  this  family 
that  such  and  such  things  shall  not  be  done,  and  you  know 
you  have  broken  that  law  three  or  four  times ;  now,  for  my 
sake,  avoid  breaking  it  again ;"  and  the  child  feels,  when  the 
mother  interposes  herself,  that  there  is  something  that  touch- 
es him  which  did  not  when  it  was  only  a  law  of  the  family 
that  he  was  violating. 

Now  God  puts  himself  in  just  that  position,  and  the  motive 
of  obedience  and  righteousness  is  this :  that  God  is  the  ten- 
derest,  the  most  patient,  the  gentlest,  and  the  dearest  friend 
that  we  have ;  that  he  knows  every  thing,  within  and  with- 
out ;  and  that,  though  we  are  sinful  and  wicked,  he  in  his  in- 
finite compassion  and  mercy  forgives  us,  and  says, "  Do  not 
sin  against  me  nor  against  mine."  It  is  this  conception  of 
sinning  against  God  as  a  person  that  has  ahvays  been  the 
most  powerful  restraint  with  me,  and  that  I  have  found  to  be 
the  most  powerful  with  other  men.  This  is  one  of  the  reasons 
why  I  have  attempted  to  rid  you  of  the  idea  of  a  God  embod- 
ied in  laws,  and  to  cultivate  the  idea  of  a  personal  God,  whose 
thoughts  and  feelings  constitute  his  laws.  When  you  con- 
sider that  right-doing  pleases  God^  and  that  wrong-doing  dis- 
pleases him,  it  quickens  the  conscience  through  the  feeling 
of  love,  and  should  make  you  more  sensitive  to  disobedience 
than  merely  the  thought  of  transgressing  God's  law,  as  if  it 
were  something  apart  from  himself  Can  there  be  raised  up 
before  the  mind  a  conception  more  stimulating,  or  one  that 
shall  more  effectually  win  and  wean  a  man  from  wrong,  and 
lift  him  toward  that  which  is  right,  than  this  scriptural  view 
of  God  which  represents  him  as  so  ineffably  gentle,  so  won- 
derfully patient,  so  sweet-minded,  and  so  intent  upon  men's 
good,  as  the  means  of  their  gloiy  ? 

2.  There  is  in  this  presentation  of  God's  character  an  argu- 
ment against  a  dishonorable  reliance  on  God's  goodness  as  a 
reason  for  persistence  in  sinning.  "Shall  we  continue  in 
sin,"  says  the  apostle,  "  that  grace  may  abound  ?"  He  has 
been  opening  this  view  of  grace  in  Christ  Jesus,  and  showing 


The  Patience  of  God.  237 

that  he  forgives  transgression  and  sin ;  and  now  he  assumes 
the  language  of  the  objector,  and  says,  "  Why,  if  God  for- 
gives sin,  when  a  man  has  stopped  sinning  and  repented,  can 
not  he  go  on  and  sin  again,  and  then  repent  again,  and  be 
forgiven  ?" 

When  men  are  bent  upon  wrong,  there  is  always  a  strong 
tendency  to  accept  those  views  of  God  which  represent  him 
as  not  very  just,  but  very  kind — so  kind  that  behind  his 
kindness  they  may  gain  some  security  in  their  wrong  courses. 
And  when  God's  long-suffering  and  patience  are  set  forth, 
such  men  often  say,  "  Well,  if  God  is  so  tender  and  loving,  I 
need  not  be  in  haste  to  leave  off  my  evil  ways ;  he  will  bear 
with  me  a  little  longer,  and  I  do  not  believe  he  will  be  severe 
with  me  for  my  petty  transgressions."  Men  deliberately  em- 
ploy God's  mercy  and  goodness  as  an  argument  for  disobedi- 
ence. Now  I  can  imagine  that  a  man  might  fleece  and  swin- 
dle me  in  a  hundred  shrewd  ways,  and  I  might  bear  with 
him.  But  suppose  I  should  find  a  man  seemingly  sick  and 
suffering  from  hunger,  and  at  great  inconvenience  I  should 
take  him  up,  bring  him  into  my  house,  give  him  the  best  that 
I  had,  nurse  him  day  after  day,  making  him  as  a  child  under 
my  roof,  and  serving  his  comfort  in  every  possible  way ;  and 
suppose,  after  about  a  week,  he  should  get  up  in  the  night, 
availing  himself  of  this  confidence  of  my  family,  and  rob  me, 
and  walk  out  of  my  dwelling,  I  think  it  would  be  hard  for 
me  to  bear  with  that.  I  do  not  know  of  any  thing  that  is 
more  wicked  than  for  a  man  to  draw  out  a  person's  benefi- 
cence toward  him,  and  then  avail  himself  of  that  person's 
generosity  as  a  means  of  injuring  him.  That  is  infernal ;  it 
is  inhuman,  because  kindness  seems  to  lay  almost  every  man 
under  a  debt  of  gratitude.  A  dog,  even,  feels  itself  laid  un- 
der a  debt  of  gratitude  by  kindness.  It  is  only  men  who 
are  so  corrupt  that  they  would  ever  think  of  making  good- 
ness, and  generosity,  and  kindness  toward  them  the  ground 
and  reason  of  a  base  requital.  And  yet  hundreds  say,  "  God 
is  good,  and  we  will  go  on  a  little  while  longer  in  sin." 


238  The  Patience  of  God. 

Yes,  he  is  infinitely  good.  He  has  been  patient  with  you ; 
he  has  longed  for  you;  he  has  sent  ten  thousand  invisible 
mercies  to  you,  besides  those  visible  mercies  which  he  show- 
ered upon  you ;  he  has  been  long-sufiering  and  forgiving ;  he 
has  sunk  in  the  depths  of  the  sea  thrice  ten  thousand  trans- 
gressions ;  he  did  it  yesterday,  he  is  doing  it  to-day,  and  he 
will  do  it  to-morrow ;  and  shall  you  argue  with  yourself  that 
because  God  is  so  good  you  will  go  on  and  insult  him,  and 
wound  him,  and  injure  him  ?  or  shall  the  goodness  of  God 
lead  you  to  repentance  and  to  newness  of  life  ?  I  beseech  of 
you,  for  the  sake  of  honor  and  manhood,  do  not  tread  upon 
God's  goodness,  and  generosity,  and  magnanimity  to  offend 
him  more. 

3.  Consider,  in  the  light  of  this  discourse,  how  we  ought 
to  forgive  eacli  other  when  we  have  been  offended  one  by 
another.  There  is  no  man  that  lives  who  sinneth  not ;  and 
there  is  no  man  that  lives  who  sinneth  not  against  his  neigh- 
bor and  his  friend.  We  dash  ourselves  upon  each  other,  not 
only  by  ignorance,  but  by  forgetfulness,  by  stress  of  tempta- 
tion, by  anger,  by  passion,  by  various  feelings.  If  perfectness 
in  our  relations  was  the  indispensable  condition  of  high  and 
noble  friendship,  there  could  be  no  such  thing  on  earth  as 
high  and  noble  friendship.  We  are  all  the  time  afflicting 
each  other,  and  sinning  more  or  less  against  each  other. 

Now  contrast  our  ordinary  mode  of  forgiveness  with  that 
of  our  God.  You  will  recollect  that  Christ,  when  he  had 
given  his  disciples  a  form  of  prayer,  made  a  commentary 
ujDon  it.  The  only  commentary  he  made  was  on  the  subject 
of  forgiveness.  "  If  ye  forgive  men  their  trespasses,  your 
heavenly  Father  will  also  forgive  you;  but  if  ye  forgive  not 
men  their  trespasses,  neither  will  your  Father  forgive  your 
trespasses."  As  I  grow  older,  and  know  more  of  life,  I  learn 
to  wonder  at  the  extent  of  man's  anger  and  implacableness. 
Our  forgiveness  is  generally  selfish.  It  seeks  our  own  good, 
and  not  the  offender's.  God's  forgiveness  is  benevolent.  He 
seeks  not  his  own  good,  but  the  good  of  those  whom  he  for- 


The  Patience  of  God.  289 

gives.  Our  forgiveness  is  slow,  grudging,  and  reluctant.  It 
is  wrung  out  of  us,  very  frequently,  only  by  the  mediation  of 
friends.  God's  forgiveness  is  ever  ready.  Not  the  arms  of  a 
mother  ever  opened  so  quick  to  her  repentant  child  as  God's 
heart  opens  to  us.  He — the  highest,  the  noblest,  and  the  best 
— forgiving  impurity,  wickedness,  transgression,  and  injus- 
tice. We,  that  ourselves  are  offenders,  are  the  ones  that  re- 
fuse to  forgive  those  that  offend  against  us.  Being  ourselves 
but  just  forgiven,  we  turn  to  him  that  has  offended  against 
us,  and  take  him  by  the  throat,  saying,  "  Pay  me  that  thou 
owest."  Is  there  to  be  no  lesson  learned  from  God's  treat- 
ment of  us  ? 

An  unforgiving  spirit  puts  a  man  farther  from  God  than 
any  other  thing.  It  is  one  of  those  dispositions  that  pro- 
voke even  God  to  retaliation.  I  think  it  is  often  far  more 
criminal  before  God  than  that  sin  over  which  it  domineers. 
It  is  a  perilous  thing  for  a  man  to  carry  in  his  heart  a  si)irit 
that  refuses  to  forgive.  And  when  you  forgive,  let  the  for- 
giveness be  large;  let  it  be  thorough;  let  it  be  like  that 
which  God,  for  Christ's  sake,  has  afforded  you. 

I  have  known  families  where  the  father  and  daughter  had 
not  sj)oken  to  each  other  for  months.  I  have  known  part- 
ners that  had  some  disagreement,  and  could  not  meet  each 
other  peaceably.  They  were  both  j^rofessing  Christians,  but 
they  did  not  sit  at  the  same  table,  since  one  went  to  one 
church,  and  the  other  to  another.  I  have  known  men,  who 
were  avowed  Christians,  that  would  not  walk  on  the  same 
side  of  the  road  with  each  other.  I  have  known  difficulties, 
that  were  simply  difficulties  of  the  hand  or  the  purse,  that  did 
not  touch  a  man's  higher  nature,  that  arose  out  of  the  mean- 
est provocations,  which  men  would  not  adjust,  could  not  for- 
give— men  professing  to  be  Christians !  Here  is  the  royal 
lore  of  divine  conduct,  of  the  glorious  majesty  of  mercy,  of 
the  wonderful  richness  of  that  love  which,  rolling  out  of  the 
heart  of  God  as  from  an  inexhaustible  fountain,  covers  down 
human  transgression ;  all  this  is  before  men ;  and  yet,  though 


2-iO  The  Patience  of  God. 

they  bear  the  sacred  name  of  Christ,  they  carry  within  them 
a  cankerous  heart  of  unforgiveness — and  that  with  reference 
t©  little,  i^etty,  trifling  afiairs  that  are  hardly  worthy  of  a 
thought.  The  very  dust  of  life  turns  us  to  such  bitterness, 
often,  that  we  are  toward  our  fellow-men  in  the  same  atti- 
tude which  Satan  is  in  toward  us — that  of  "  accusers  of  the 
brethren."  Oh  !  how  little  have  we  learned  of  the  spirit  of 
Christ.  Until  we  have  learned  to  forgive  so  thoroughly  that 
the  heart,  instead  of  fostering  bitterness  and  animosity,  has 
become  a  heart  that  would  nurse,  and  that  would  bless,  we  can 
not  be  said  to  be  true  and  faithful  exemplars  of  the  Gospel 
of  our  Lord  and  Savior  Jesus  Christ. 

4.  In  this  view  of  God  there  is  encouragement  to  all  who 
are  honestly  seeking  to  live  a  godly  life.  There  are  a  great 
many  persons  that  would  fain  become  Christians  if  they 
thought  they  should  persevere.  Do  you  then  suppose  that 
Christ  called  you  into  his  kingdom,  saying,  "  I  will  help  you 
in,  but  when  you  are  once  in  you  must  take  care  of  your- 
self?" Of  course  you  will  not  be  a  consistent  Christian. 
You  will  sin  as  long  as  you  live.  If  any  man  comes  to 
me  and  says,  "  Now  I  am  Avilling  to  be  called  a  Christian, 
and  I  want  to  join  your  church,  for  I  think  that  I  am  in  a 
state  in  which  I  can  live  a  perfectly  Christian  life,"  I  say  to 
him, "  Go  away.  We  do  not  want  you.  We  have  no  ar- 
rangements for  such  folks."  God  sent  us  to  conduct  an  in- 
stitution and  economy  which  has  in  view  the  healing  of  the 
people.  If  there  is  any  body  that  needs  healing,  we  have 
the  means  with  which  to  heal  him.  I  am,  we  will  suppose, 
a  physician  having  charge  of  a  hospital.  There  comes  one 
who  has  been  struck  by  a  bullet,  and  whose  breast  is  ter- 
ribly lacerated.  I  say,  "Pass  him  into  ward  No.  6,"  and 
away  he  goes.  Here  comes  another  man,  bandaged  and  limp- 
ing. His  arm  is  broken,  and  he  has  received  a  severe  wound 
in  the  leg.  I  give  directions  for  him  to  be  taken  to  ward 
No.  7.  Presently  there  comes  up  a  brisk,  fine-looking  fellow, 
who  says, "  I  wish  you  would  let  me  go  in."    "  What  is  the 


The  Patience  of  God.  241 

matter  with  you  ?"  I  ask.  "  Oh,  nothing,"  he  says ;  "  I  am  fit 
to  go  in ;  I  am  all  right  in  every  respect."  "  Then  you  can 
not  go  in,"  I  say.  "  This  is  not  the  place  for  people  with 
whom  there  is  nothing  the  matter.  It  is  not  a  tavern ;  it  is 
a  hospital." 

Now  many  people  go  to  church  as  a  rich  man  from  the 
South  goes  to  a  hotel.  He  has  his  big  boxes,  his  trunks,  his 
wife,  his  children,  and  plenty  of  money,  and  he  wants  to  find 
commodious  apai'tments.  Many  people  think  that  if  they 
have  clothes,  and  a  good  supply  of  money,  and  are  well-ap- 
pearing and  good-paying  boarders  in  the  hotel  of  the  Church, 
they  are  just  the  kind  that  we  want.  We  do  not  want  any 
such  folks.  We  have  too  many  of  them  already !  This,  in 
respect  to  a  man's  qualifications  for  entering  the  Church,  falsi- 
fies the  fundamental  idea  of  Christianity ;  for  we  look  upon 
men,  and  know  that  they  are  fallible,  imperfect,  and  that,  by 
the  force  of  evil  passions  from  within,  and  the  pressure  of 
temptations  from  without,  imjDcrfection  has  wrought  itself 
into  sins  in  innumerable  instances.  Habit  is  so  powerful, 
sympathy  is  so  strong,  the  allurements  of  the  world  are  so 
engaging,  and  the  Prince  of  the  power  of  the  air  is  so  w^ise 
an  administrator,  that  we  know  perfectly  well  that  every 
living  man  sins,  and  will  sin. 

But  ah !  we  have  a  Physician  for  him;  and  if  he  knows  that 
he  sins,  if  his  heart  is  sick  of  sinning,  and  he  despairs  of  get- 
ting over  it,  if  he  is  penitent,  and  earnestly  desires  to  enter 
upon  a  course  of  right  living,  then  we  will  take  him  by  the 
hand.  Why  ?  Because  he  is  so  good  ?  No ;  because  he  is  so 
bad.  Do  you  suppose  that  if  I  were  going  out  to  teach  those 
that  needed  teaching,  I  would  go  to  Dr.  Leiber,  who  knows 
more  in  his  hand  than  I  know  in  my  whole  body  ?  I  would 
go  to  some  little  ragamufiin  that  could  not  say  his  ABC, 
and  I  would  go  to  him  because  he  was  so  ignorant.  His  igno- 
rance would  be  the  ground  on  which  I  should  go  to  him.  The 
condition  of  joining  a  school  that  I  should  open  would  be  that 
the  applicants  should  not  know  too  much.     Ignorance  is  the 

n.— Q 


242  The  Patience  of  God. 

qualification  foi-  entering  a  school,  as  sickness  is  the  qualifica- 
tion fox*  entering  a  hospital.  And  if  a  man  comes  into  the 
Church,  it  is  on  the  ground,  not  that  he  is  perfect,  so  that  we 
can  afibrd  to  paint  his  portrait,  and  hang  it  up  in  the  gallery 
of  saints,  but  that  he  is  imperfect.  If  a  man  says  to  me,  "My 
self-esteem  sins,  my  selfish  propensities  sin,  my  understanding 
sins,  my  afiections  sin,  my  moral  sentiments  sin — I  am  sick 
of  this  sinning;  I  am  tired  of  the  wicked  life  that  I  am  lead- 
ing, and  I  long  for  some  help,"  "Ah!"  I  say,  "behold  the 
God  that  you  need."  Let  me  read  this  description  of  him 
again : 

"  Who  is  a  God  like  unto  thee,  that  pardoneth  iniquity,  and 
passeth  by  the  transgression  of  the  remnant  of  his  heritage  ? 
He  retaineth  not  his  anger  forever,  because  he  delighteth  in 
mercy.  He  will  turn  again,  he  will  have  compassion  upon 
us;  he  will  subdue  our  iniquities;  and  thou  wilt  cast  all 
their  sins  into  the  depths  of  the  sea." 

Do  any  of  you  want  such  a  God  ?  Are  there  any  of  you 
that  are  willing,  under  such  conditions,  to  live  a  life  of  right- 
eousness ?  I  call  for  scholars  for  the  school  of  the  Lord  Je- 
sus Christ !  For  there  is  a  great  school  opened,  and  there  is 
a  great  Teacher.  He  proposes  to  enlighten  the  understand- 
ing, to  awaken  the  affections,  and  to  develop  the  moral  senti- 
ments; and  he  declares  that  he  will  do  it  gently  and  with 
tenderness.  Does  any  body  want  to  go  to  school  to  Christ  ? 
I  call  for  disciples — for  the  meaning  of  disciples  is  scholars 
— for  Christ's  school.  Are  there  any  that  want  to  learn  of 
the  Savior?  Hark  to  his  invitation :  "  Come  unto  me,  all  ye 
that  labor  and  are  heavy  laden,  and  I  will  give  you  rest. 
Take  my  yoke  upon  you,  and  learn  of  me ;  for  I  am  meek  and 
lowly  in  heart ;  and  ye  shall  find  rest  unto  your  souls." 


XI. 


(0n&'0  UitHlmnhi) 


Preached  in  Plymouth  Church,  Brooklyn,  Sabbath  evenings 
October  i6ih,  1859. 


Gtod's  Husbandey. 


"Ye  are  God's  husbandry." — 1  Cor.,  iii.,  9. 

So  large  and  various  are  spiritual  truths  that  they  can  not 
be  fully  expressed  by  any  one  formula  of  words,  or  by  any 
single  illustration.  Repetition,  in  endless  varieties,  therefore, 
is  the  method  of  instruction  in  the  Bible.  One  class  of  natu- 
ral objects  gives  one  shade  of  truth;  another  class  adds  to  it 
something  else ;  and,  by  continuous  and  varying  illustration, 
there  is  some  approximation  to  the  whole  truth.  But,  at  best, 
it  is  only  an  approximation.  An  exhaustive  statement  of 
even  the  smallest  spiritual  truths  can  not  be  made  in  human 
language ;  and  if  it  were,  it  could  not  be  received  by  the  hu- 
man mind.  All  that  are  well  instructed  are  obliged  to  say, 
with  Paul  himself,  in  respect  to  the  fullest  disclosures, "  We 
know  in  part,  and  we  prophesy  in  part."  Only  when  that 
state  which  is  perfect  shall  come,  shall  we  know  as  we  are 
known. 

In  the  passage  which  I  have  selected,  the  apostle  declares 
that  Christians  are  God's  husbandry.  He  likens  the  work  of 
grace  carried  on  in  the  human  soul  by  the  divine  love  and 
power  to  the  operations  of  the  farmer.  In  varying  my  meth- 
ods of  instruction  that  you  may  not  be  weary,  I  have  thought 
that  I  might,  perhaps,  to-night,  without  being  charged  with 
fancifulness,  follow  out  this  figure ;  and,  if  I  teach  no  new 
truths,  I  may  at  least,  by  an  extended  analogy,  attract  atten- 
tion to  old  ones,  which  is  far  better. 

1.  The  first  condition  of  the  soil — its  wilderness  condition, 


2J:6  God's  Husbandry. 

as  you  all  know,  is  not  without  growths,  and  not  without 
growths  that  have  some  degree  of  utility.  Nevertheless,  the 
natural  growths  of  the  soil  must  give  way  before  there  can 
be  civilized  husbandry.  The  land  is,  in  its  native  state,  over- 
grown with  forests,  choked  with  underbrush,  and  cumbered 
with  fallen  and  decaying  materials.  The  sun  is  always  hid- 
den from  its  interior.  It  is  apt  to  be  a  lair  of  beasts — a  ref- 
uge of  wolves,  and  bears,  and  foxes — of  owls,  and  hawks,  and 
every  uncomely  thing. 

This  is  certainly  the  state  of  the  human  soil  before  relig- 
ious culture  is  applied  to  it.  It  is  eminently  so  of  the  bar- 
barous and  heathen  nations  of  the  earth,  which  are  gigan- 
tically fruitful  of  growths — but  of  wild  gi'owths,  useless  or 
pernicious,  or  both.  It  is  so,  in  a  modified  sense,  of  the  thou- 
sands of  men  in  Christian  communities  who  are  but  external- 
ly restrained  by  Christianity,  and  whose  passions,  aj)petites, 
and  habits  are  wild,  gross,  and  untamed.  This  is  the  condi- 
tion of  all  men  alike.  Though  they  vary  in  degree  of  mental 
resources  as  one  piece  of  ground  varies  from  another  piece  in 
degree  of  fertility,  yet  there  is  a  general  sameness  among 
them :  they  are  in  a  state  of  wilderness  in  the  beginning. 

2.  The  first  step  of  husbandry  is  to  relieve  the  soil  of  these 
wild  growths,  and  prepare  it  for  tillage.  The  era  is  of  the 
ox,  in  the  beginning.  A  long  labor  is  required,  and  laborious 
mdeed  is  the  task.  One  of  two  ways  is  usually  pursued. 
One  part  of  the  soil  is  ordinarily,  as  it  is  said,  "  cut  off  clean." 
The  trees  are  felled,  and  then  gathered  together  and  burned, 
that  the  ground  may  be  disencumbered  and  laid  open  to  the 
sun.  But  some,  for  expedition,  are  only  girdled.  All  con- 
nection between  the  sap  at  the  roots  and  the  top  is  severed  by 
a  line  of  sharp  cuts  around  the  trees;  and  so  girdled,  they 
will  stand  and  carry  through  the  summer  the  leaves  already 
out,  but  they  will  never  leave  again.  When  thus  they  have 
been  left,  gradually  growing  weaker  and  weaker,  and  decay- 
ing, the  very  winds  help  the  farmer  by  overturning  his  trees 
for  him,  and  giving  space  for  the  air  and  sunlight,  so  that,  lit- 


God's  Husbandry.  247 

tie  by  little,  more  and  more  ground  is  susceptible  to  the 
plow. 

The  first  work  of  religion  in  the  human  soul  is  analogous  to 
this.  It  is  to  cut  up  the  grosser  processes  of  life ;  it  is  to  de- 
stroy the  worst  forms  of  evil  habits ;  it  is  to  cleanse  men  of 
vices,  to  rid  them  of  vile  associates,  to  cure  them  of  evil  dispo- 
sitions ;  it  is  to  drive  away  all  the  works  of  darkness.  Many 
of  the  things  which  men  practice  in  an  unregenerate  state  are, 
by  the  j^ower  of  God's  grace  at  their  conversion,  cut  down 
peremptorily  and  taken  out  of  the  way.  But  there  are  a 
great  many  things  that  must  yet  disappear  from  the  human 
soul  before  God's  husbandry  is  completed — things  that  in  the 
beginning  are  only  girdled.  They  hold  some  leaves  for  a 
single  season ;  they  hold  their  trunk  and  branches  several  sea- 
sons, and  only  little  by  little  are  they  toppled  over  and 
brought  to  the  ground. 

3.  When  the  process  is  complete — this  prelhninary  process 
— the  pioneer  farmer  is  ready  for  the  next  stage,  which  is  that 
of  seed-planting.  It  is  not  smooth  sward  that  his  jolow  is  now 
to  turn — no  mellow  field,  which  it  is  a  pleasure  to  plow ;  it  is 
rough  soil,  full  of  the  green  stumps  of  trees  but  just  disajipear- 
ed.  And,  worse  than  this,  roots  are  coiled,  and  netted,  and 
matted  all  over  the  ground,  and  all  through  it ;  and  the  fur- 
row must  be  shallow;  and  only  in  sj)ots  can  it  be  made  at 
that,  and  very  imperfect  at  the  best — wretchedly  crooked; 
but  yet  there  is  a  furrow  skimmed  through  the  field,  that 
shall  be  some  sort  of  refuge  for  seed.  The  ground  is,  at  any 
rate,  open  to  the  sun.  Every  year  will  bring  away  more  of 
these  decaying  stumps ;  every  plowing  will  rip  up  and  throw 
out  some  of  these  roots,  infixed  in  the  earth ;  and  every  wind 
will  bring  down  some  of  those  tall,  gaunt,  leafless,  girdled 
trees,  that  yet  encumber  the  soil.  It  is  a  very  poor  show, 
to  be  sure;  but  then  it  is  a  beginning,  and  that  is  a  good 
deal  in  some  things. 

And  so  it  is  with  men.  Their  first  efibrts  at  goodness 
are  very  crooked  and  shallow,  like  a  man's  furrow  in  a  newly- 


248  God's  Husbandry. 

plowed  piece  of  ground.  There  are  men  that  look  back  and 
say,  "  When  we  dwelt  as  trappers  and  hunters  in  the  wilder- 
ness, there  was  some  comeliness  to  our  wild  life,  rude  though 
it  was ;  but,  now  that  we  have  essayed  regular  husbandry, 
look  at  our  bleak  fields ;  look  at  our  wretched  processes ;  look 
how  dismal  the  farm  is !"  "Well,  it  is  dismal.  So,  when  men 
first  begin  to  reform  from  their  grosser  passional  vices — when 
the  indolent  man  begins  to  be  industrious  and  to  work ;  when 
the  drinking  man  begins  to  reform  and  turn  to  the  virtues  of 
temperance ;  when  the  obscene  and  salacious  imagination  be- 
gins to  cleanse  itself;  when  men  begin  to  let  go  of  the  lower 
forms  of  wickedness,  and  to  sow  the  higher  seeds  of  virtue 
— when  these  things  take  place,  it  is  often  like  the  sudden 
taking  away  of  the  forest,  and  the  laying  open  of  the  soil  to 
the  sun.  The  first  crops  are  very  thin,  very  poor,  very  un- 
satisfactory ;  yet  these  incipient  steps  must  be  taken,  if  you 
are  going  to  have  a  good  farm  by-aud-by. 

4.  The  good  husbandman  does  not  attempt  to  do  all  things 
at  once.  Having  gone  thus  far,  usually  the  home-lot  —  the 
place  where  his  house  is  to  be  built — is  cleared.  There  he 
lays  out  all  his  strength.  With  renewed  industry,  he  clears 
away  the  stones,  roots  out  the  stumps,  and  smooths  and 
grades  the  ground — a  little  piece,  say  an  acre,  where  his  house 
is  to  be.  Then  next  to  this,  and  nearest  to  his  home,  lot  after 
lot,  ten-acre  after  ten-acre,  he  begins  to  give  a  more  thorough 
farming.  He  begins  to  get  what  are  called  the  home-lots  into 
a  better  condition,  letting  the  outlying  ones  go  with  ruder 
culture.  Those  nearest  the  house  are  first  subdued.  Every 
year  he  puts  more  and  more  work  upon  them,  bringing  them 
gradually  into  a  better  and  better  condition. 

So  men  usually  begin  to  correct  their  faults,  and  smooth 
down  those  traits  of  their  character  which  lie  next  to  them- 
selves, as  it  were,  and  which  are  in  the  family.  The  later 
Christian  attainments  are,  so  to  speak,  outlying  yet.  They 
make  a  little  place  where  they  can  live.  Then  one  and 
another  habit  is  attacked,  and  trait  after  trait  is  added. 


God's  Husbandey.  249 

And  so  they  enlarge,  more  and  more,  every  year,  their  hus- 
bandry. 

5.  Hitherto  only  the  great  staples  have  been  put  into  the 
farm — the  grains  and  roots  absolutely  needed  for  sustenance. 
But  now,  the  first  work  being  somewhat  advanced,  this  be- 
ginning farmer  considers  other  things.  He  plans  a  garden ; 
not  altogether  for  esculent  things  either,  but  for  flowers  as 
well.  He  sets  out  an  orchard.  He  even  considers  the  claims 
of  beauty ;  and  a  door-yard  appears.  Beds  of  flowers  are 
seen,  and  vines  begin  to  twine  around  the  lintels  of  the  door. 

There  is  a  close  analogy  to  this  in  spiritual  life.  At  first 
it  is  a  tough,  hard  fight  for  life,  and  men  are  doubtful  what 
will  be  the  result.  They  then  begin  to  reap  a  higher  experi- 
ence, and  to  taste  some  fruits  of  Christian  dispositions.  By- 
and-by  they  begin  to  have  times  of  richer  gladness — more 
liberty,  more  hope.  Prayer  grows  out  of  the  form  of  duty 
into  the  form  of  pleasure.  God's  Word  opens  like  a  garden 
gate,  and  they  walk  amid  beds  of  flowers.  They  reach  up 
their  hands,  and  pluck  down  clusters  of  fruit — richer  experi- 
ences— the  fruits  of  the  Spirit.  They  have  an  orchard,  but  it 
is  young  yet.  Only  one  or  two  trees  bear  at  all,  and  these 
bear  but  one  or  two  apples  apiece.  But  these  single  fruits 
on  the  boughs  of  a  solitary  tree  here  and  there  are  promises 
and  prophecies  of  that  which  is  to  come ;  and  they  look  on 
them  with  the  spirit  of  hope,  and  see  not  what  is,  but  what 
soon  shall  be. 

6.  But  when  a  man  has  gone  thus  far,  and  has  leisure,  and 
exi^erience,  and  confidence,  gained  from  success,  he  begins,  if 
he  be  a  good  husbandman,  to  take  an  inventory  of  his  whole 
place,  and  he  determines  that  now  he  will  bring  in  every 
acre.  All  outlying  lots  are  to  be  cleared.  Many  acres  of 
rocky  soil,  hitherto  neglected  till  time  and  means  would  ena- 
ble him  to  bring  them  into  a  state  of  cultivation,  must  now 
be  subdued.  Many  low  and  swampy  places,  hitherto  un- 
touched, must  be  drained.  He  is  able  to  do  it  now ',  he  was 
not  before.     Besides,  he  has  a  plan,  now,  for  his  whole  farm. 


250  God's  Husbandey. 

He  sees  it,  not  just  around  his  home;  he  sees  it,  not  as  just 
enough  for  a  livelihood,  but  as  an  estate — a  thing  of  beauty 
as  well  as  profit,  to  be  made  symmetrical  in  every  part. 

So,  eminently,  is  it  with  advanced  and  advancing  Chris- 
tians. After  a  time  many  men  experience  a  second  conver- 
sion, as  it  seems  to  them.  After  they  have  advanced  a  cer- 
tain way,  they  seem  to  be  broken  up  anew.  They  have  a 
sense  of  the  completeness  of  Christian  character.  They  as- 
sail certain  states  of  mind,  feelings,  habits,  inert  afiections, 
rugged  dispositions  —  all  things  that  are  outlying — with  a 
new  zeal.  They  are  aroused  to  a  sense  of  the  largeness  and 
symmetry  of  Christian  character  in  a  way  that  they  did  not 
know  in  the  beginning.  God  often  reveals  the  whole  idea  of 
Christian  living  —  its  fullness,  symmetry,  perfectness,  and 
beauty — in  such  a  way  that  men  feel  that  they  never  be- 
fore knew  what  Christianity  was.  Nothing  is  more  frequent 
than  for  men  to  say, "  All  my  past  exjjerience  was  illusory," 
simply  because  it  was  so  imperfect  and  low.  "  Now,  at  last," 
they  say,  "  I  begin  to  know  what  it  is  to  be  a  Christian." 
And  their  pui-pose  is  to  subdue  every  thought  and  every  feel- 
ing to  the  will  of  God. 

7.  But  the  farmer,  advanced  so  far,  begins  now,  as  his  last 
step,  to  apply  to  his  soil,  thus  brought  forward,  the  most  sci- 
entific methods  of  ascertained  husbandry.  He  underdrains 
the  whole  of  his  estate — for  now  he  has  the  capital  to  do  it 
with — and  never  less  than  four  feet  deep,  if  he  be  wise ;  for 
deep  draining,  whether  in  the  heart  or  in  the  soil,  is  very  ex- 
cellent, and  shallow  draining  is  very  poor — better  than  noth- 
ing, but  only  that.  And  when  he  has  his  land  underdrained 
thoroughly,  so  that  all  those  stagnant  pools,  and  all  those 
cold  and  chilling  springs  that  deluge  the  roots  of  tender- 
growing  plants  are  carried  away,  then  he  subsoils.  Before, 
he  had  only  skimmed  the  surface  of  the  ground,  sometimes 
because  the  roots  would  not  let  him  go  deeper,  and  some- 
times because  it  was  cheaper,  and  he  had  not  time  to  do  his 
work  more  thoroughly ;  but  now,  having  time  and  means  for 


God'.s  Husbandry.  251 

the  most  thorough  culture,  he  puts  down  the  plow  as  far  as 
iron  can  go,  and  mellows  the  soil  and  the  subsoil  down  deep 
in  the  earth.  Then  he  begins  to  select  better  herbs  than 
before.  In  the  beginning  he  took  whatever  he  could  get, 
but  now  he  will  have  only  the  finer  seeds  for  planting.  The 
old  buildings  must  give  way,  one  by  one,  to  new  and  better 
structures,  both  for  his  own  dwelling  and  the  dwellings  of 
his  tenants — for  he  begins  to  have  tenants  now. 

And  just  so  it  is  with  Christians.  As  they  grow  in  grace, 
and  as  God,  the  great  Husbandman,  perfects  the  work  of 
clearing  up  and  bringing  into  a  condition  of  complete  tillage 
the  human  heart,  the  religious  feelings  grow  deeper.  Many 
of  those  causes  which  obstructed  their  growth  are  now 
drained  and  earned  off  from  the  soul.  Many  passions  ai-e 
utterly  stanched  and  healed  which  before  deluged  the  ten- 
der-growing experiences.  Men  give  themselves  more  thor- 
ough religious  cultivation.  More  and  more  do  they  feel  how 
important  is  heart-culture  above  all  earthly  interests.  A»d 
the  later  periods  of  Christian  experience  are  by  far  the  most 
assiduous  and  the  most  faithful. 

8.  There  are  several  thoughts  which  may  be  brought  in 
here,  miscellaneously,  before  we  pass  on  to  make  an  applica- 
tion of  our  subject. 

We  may  perceive,  from  what  has  been  said,  the  differ- 
ence between  instantaneous  beginnings  and  gradual  devel- 
opments. No  man  ever  suddenly  cleared  up  forty  acres 
of  land.  A  man  may  begm  such  a  work  suddenly.  No 
man  ever  begun  to  do  a  thing  without  making  up  his  mind 
to  do  it.  There  is  an  instant  of  time  in  which  he  says  "  I 
will  do  it."  That  is  instantaneous ;  but  the  doin//  requires  a 
long  period. 

And  so  it  is  in  Christian  life.  No  man  ever  began  to 
be  a  Christian  without  a  volition ;  and  no  volition  was  ever 
any  thing  but  a  flash  —  an  instantaneous  thing.  But  the 
mere  volition  is  only  a  beginning.  The  evolution  of  Chris- 
tian character  is  gradual.     Many  men  say,  "  I  do  not  believe 


252  God's  Husbandry. 

in  the  idea  of  a  man  being  all  wicked  to-day,  and  all  good 
to-morrow."  Neither  do  L  But  do  you  not  believe  that  a 
man  who  to-day  gives  himself  up  freely  to  that  which  is 
wicked,  may  say  to-morrow,  "  I  will,  from  this  time,  deny 
myself  that  which  is  bad,  and  undertake  to  do  that  which  is 
good  ?"  The  purpose  is  changed ;  that  step  in  the  work  of 
reformation  is  instantaneous;  but  the  thing  to  be  accom- 
plished must  be  brought  about  gradually — it  must  go  on 
through  days,  and  weeks,  and  months,  and  even  years,  before 
it  can  be  consummated. 

In  like  manner  we  can  understand  somewhat  the  meaning 
of  succession  in  Christian  experience.  We  know  that  in  hus- 
bandry, until  some  things  are  done,  other  things  can  not  be 
reached.  There  is  an  order  of  nature.  There  is  no  such 
thing  as  plowing  till  the  forest  is  cut  off;  there  is  no  such 
thing  as  planting  till  the  plowing  has  taken  place ;  and  there 
is  no  such  thing  as  reaping  till  growth  has  given  you  a  crop. 
And  though  you  may  abate  the  time  between  one  operation 
and  another,  you  can  not  do  all  these  things  on  one  and  the 
same  plane. 

And  as  there  must  be  an  order  of  succession  in  natural 
things,  so  there  must  be  an  order  of  succession  or  develop- 
ment in  Christian  experience  and  Christian  life  which  noth- 
ing can  disarrange.  "We  can  not  anticipate  those  graces 
which  come  only  after  the  rijaening  of  preceding  graces.  We 
are  to  labor  for  them,  but  only  as  the  farmer  does,  knowing 
that  things  must  go  through  an  appointed  evolution  and  de- 
velopment. Graces  grow  just  as  grains  do ;  first  the  seed 
sprouting  under  the  ground,  then  the  blade  coming  to  the 
top  of  the  ground,  then  the  stem  appearing,  then  the  unripe 
ear,  then  the  rij^ening  kernels,  and  at  last  the  full  ears  of  yel- 
.  low,  golden  grain. 

Again,  we  perceive  that  the  hardest  part  in  both  kinds  of 
husbandry  is  apt  to  come  at  the  beginning,  but  that,  if  well 
met  then,  it  grows  easier  and  easier  every  successive  year. 
How  hard  was  it  at  first  to  bring  the  soil  to  such  a  state 


God's  Husbandry.  253 

that  you  dared  to  think  "  plow !"  and  how  hard  is  it  for  a 
man  at  first  to  bring  himself  into  such  a  state  that  he  dares 
to  think  "  prayer !"  How,  when  the  plow  was  first  put  into 
the  ground,  it  bounded  out,  striking  stones,  and  throwing  it- 
self hither  and  thither,  and  the  holder  with  it !  and  how, 
when  a  man  cuts  his  first  furrows  of  grace,  he  is  slung  about 
hither  and  thither,  and  made  to  be  a  great  deal  more  nimble 
than  he  wishes  to  be !  Yet,  after  ten  years  have  passed, 
look  upon  that  same  operation  in  the  field.  Now,  as  the 
man  plows,  he  whistles,  and  smgs,  and  watches  the  birds, 
and  only  now  and  then  takes  account  of  the  furrow.  The 
ox  scarcely  sweats.  The  turf  goes  over  as  if  it  loved  to  be 
turned,  and  the  plow  tucks  it  down  as  a  mother  tucks  a  cov- 
erlet round  her  chUd.  Now  it  is  very  easy.  Yes,  it  is  very 
easy ;  but  it  had  to  learn  to  be  easy ! 

So  it  is  with  spiritual  plowing.  Some  men,  looking  upon 
others,  and  seeing  with  what  ease  they  perform  their  Chris- 
tian duties,  say, "  There  must  have  been  more  grace  given  to 
them  than  there  has  been  given  to  me ;  for  what  it  is  almost 
impossible  for  me  to  do,  they  seem  to  do  without  the  least 
trouble."  The  reason  is,  that  their  higher  nature  has  had 
more  culture  than  yours  has  had.  If  you  will  take  the  rocks 
out  of  your  rocky  field,  and  the  stumps  out  of  your  stumpy 
field,  in  five  or  ten  years  you  shall  have  just  as  good  plowing 
as  they  have.     But  you  have  got  to  €ar7i  it. 

How  many  men  there  are  who  would  like  to  be  able  to  get 
their  graces  just  as  they  can  get  an  old,  well-cultivated  farm. 
They  can  buy  a  farm  after  it  has  been  brought  to  the  high- 
est state  of  perfection ;  but,  though  you  can  do  that  in  natu- 
ral husbandry,  you  can  not  do  it  in  spiritual  husbandry.  Ev- 
ery man  has  to  take  his  own  spiritual  farm,  and  bring  it,  step 
by  step,  into  a  state  of  perfection,  if  he  would  have  it  in  that 
state. 

9.  I  may,  perhaps,  without  seeming  fanciful,  use  this  alle- 
gory to  describe  the  various  kinds  of  spiritual  husbandmen 
and  husbandry. 


254  God's  Husbandry. 

First,  there  are  shiftless  and  lazy  farmers  in  the  natural 
world,  and  among  real  husbandmen.  They  have  no  ambi- 
tion, and  very  little  industry.  They  raise  just  enough  grain 
to  keep  them  through  the  year — just  enough  to  live  on,  and 
to  make  laziness  fat.  That  is  all  they  ask,  and  therefore  they 
have  no  ambition  to  seek  for  more.  They  have  no  better 
farms  at  the  end  of  ten  years  than  they  had  in  the  beginning. 
They  manage  to  get  enough  off  from  them  to  keep  soul  and 
body  together,  and  that  is  all. 

And  how  many  men  there  are  who,  after  having  been  in 
the  Church  ten  or  twenty  years,  are  just  about  where  they 
were  when  they  first  entered  it !  They  are  a  little  better  in 
this  or  that  field — a  little  improved  in  spots — but  the  annual 
harvest  is  not  much  more  at  the  end  of  twenty  years  than  it 
was  at  the  end  of  five  years.  Lazy  Christians !  shiftless 
Christians  !  ungrowing  and  unfruitful  Christians  ! 

Next,  there  are  the  scheming^  changeable  farmers.  There 
are  men  who,  every  year,  instead  of  laying  out  their  strength 
upon  well-ascertained  processes,  and  for  definite  and  practi- 
cal realities,  are  bewitched  with  new  schemes  and  experi- 
ments. They  are  forever  trying  new  things,  without  com- 
pleting old  ones.  They  are  continually  running  from  one 
thing  to  another;  and  the  rick  shows  the  result  of  such  farm- 
ing. The  barn  and  granary  are  lean.  Only  the  man's  head 
is  rich — rich  in  new  schemes  ! 

And  there  are  just  such  spiritual  farmers.  One  is  running 
after  new  promises,  another  after  a  new  faith,  and  another 
after  new  solutions  of  miracles.  One  man  has  got  a  new  doc- 
trine, another  man  has  got  some  new  idea  of  ecclesiasticism 
and  Church  organization,  and  another  man  has  got  some  new 
way  of  putting  this  or  that  religious  truth.  There  is  nothing 
so  exciting  to  them  as  these  perpetual  newnesses.  They  see 
their  old  farms  left  untilled,  with  more  burdocks,  and  thistles, 
and  weeds  growing  on  every  acre  of  them  than  any  wain, 
thrice  loaded,  could  carry  off!  Their  time  and  attention  are 
absorbed  by  religious  schemes  and  speculations.  Poor,  mis- 
erable, thriftless  spiritual  husbandry  is  this  ! 


God's  Husbandry.  255 

Then  there  are  the  pedigree  farmers,  not  unknown  among 
men  in  natural  husbandry.  They  have  got  the  very  poorest 
fruit  to  be  found  in  the  whole  neighborhood,  bearing  the  high- 
est-sounding names.  They  have  got  the  most  marvelous 
pears,  the  most  wonderful  apples,  the  most  extraordinary 
strawberries.  They  give  the  most  astonishing  names  to  the 
most  meagre,  miserable  fruit.  But  then  it  has  such  high- 
sounding  titles !  These  are  the  same  men  whose  herds  are 
the  poorest,  the  scrawniest,  and  the  weakest  in  the  whole 
country  round;  but  they  have  a  pedigree  that  takes  them 
back,  every  one  of  them,  to  Noah's  ark !  Their  oxen  are 
lean,  their  cows  are  milkless,  but  they  are  proud  of  them 
nevertheless — they  have  such  a  noble  pedigree !  They  are 
uncurried,  unfatted,  and  unfatable,  to  be  sure  ;  but  ah  !  what 
a  line  of  blood  did  they  spring  from ! 

Did  you  never  see  just  such  husbandmen  in  the  Church  ? — 
men  who  had  no  greater  morality,  or  piety,  or  spiritual  exj^e- 
rience,  but  who  went  back  through  a  long  pedigree,  one  going 
even  up  to  Peter,  and  another  up  to  Paul,  and  others  up  to 
the  prophets  themselves !     These  -^eve pedigree  farmers  ! 

Then,  next,  there  are  what  may  be  called  choff  farmers  in 
spiritual  husbandry.  I  do  not  know  that  there  are  any  such 
in  natural  husbandry ;  but  you  can  conceive  what  they  would 
be  there.  Suppose  you  should  find  a  farmer  who  said  that  he 
had  been  pondering  upon  the  theory  and  science  of  farming ; 
that  he  was  satisfied  that  farmers  had  been  doing  injustice  to 
many  kmds  of  seeds ;  and  that  he  felt  assured  that  if  a  man 
would  sow  cockle-seeds,  and  do  it  sincerely,  God  would  give 
the  increase  ?     So  he  would — of  cockles ! 

Here  is  a  man  who  is  sowing  what  appears  to  be  black 
ashes.  A  friend  accosts  him,  saying, "  What  have  you  got  in 
your  bag  ?"  He  learns  that  it  is  the  hulls  of  buckwheat — the 
chaff  of  old  wheat ;  and  he  says, "  "What  are  you  sowing  chaff 
for  ?"  "  Why,"  the  man  replies,  "  I  have  the  impression  that 
if  a  man  is  only  faithful  and  sincere,  it  makes  no  difference 
what  he  sows !"    Does  it  not  make  a  difference?    Suppose  a 


256  God's  Husbandry. 

man  should  sow  couch-grass,  thinking  that  he  was  going  to 
get  timothy  hay  ?  Would  he  ?  Suppose  a  man  should  set 
out  crab-apple-trees  in  his  orchard,  and  think  that  he  was  go- 
ing to  get  fall  pippins  ?  Would  he  ?  Suppose  a  man  should 
sow  that  most  detestable  of  all  detestable  seeds,  the  Canada 
thistle,  and  say  that  it  was  wheat  ?  Would  any  amount  of 
botanical  sincerity  on  the  part  of  this  fool  secure  to  him  a 
harvest  of  any  thing  better  than  the  seed  sown  ?  If  he  sow- 
ed chnff,  he  would  not  even  reap  chaff.  If  he  sowed  weeds, 
he  would  reap  weeds.  For  what  a  man  sows,  in  natural  hus- 
bandry, that  shall  he  reap. 

Now  a  great  many  persons  say, "  Why  do  you  teach  us 
such  and  such  doctrines  of  the  Godhead  ?  Why  do  you  teach 
us  that  we  should  believe  in  the  everlasting  Father,  in  the 
atoning  Son,  and  in  the  Holy  Ghost  ?  Why  must  we  go  in  this 
new  and  living  way  ?  What  matter  is  it  whether  we  believe 
in  the  Bible  or  not,  so  that  we  live  about  right  ?  or  so  that 
we  are  sincere,  and  do  about  as  well  as  we  know  how  ?  Is 
not  that  enough  ?"  No,  it  is  not  enough.  There  is  the  same 
connection  between  spiritual  seed  and  the  result  that  there  is 
between  natural  seed  and  the  result.  Sincerity  is  a  very  good 
thing,  but  it  can  not  make  grain  out  of  chaff;  neither  can  it 
make  Christian  graces  out  of  worldly  affections  and  worldly 
estates.  There  are  certain  truths  that  must  be  held,  in  sub- 
stance, at  least.  There  are  certain  spiritual  truths  that  stand 
so  connected  with  a  spiritual  cause  as  to  be  indispensable  to 
certain  spiritual  results;  and  that  man  who  thinks  that  it 
makes  no  difference  what  he  believes,  so  long  as  he  is  sin- 
cere, is  a  cAo^  farmer. 

Next  are  what  may  be  called  fence  farmers.  What  would 
you  think  of  a  husbandman  who  was  not  particularly  careful 
of  his  mowing  lot,  or  of  his  grain  crops,  or  of  his  root  crops, 
or  of  his  orchard,  or  of  his  garden,  but  left  them  all  in  a  sad- 
ly neglected  state,  because  he  was  giving  his  whole  time  to  the 
building  of  his  fences  ?  One  large  part  of  his  time  is  employed 
in  setting  up  his  surveyor's  instruments,  and  taking  measure- 


God's  Husbandey.  257 

ments,  perhaps  for  the  five  hundredth  time,  of  the  boundaries 
of  his  farm.  He  gets  up  in  the  morning,  and  says,  "  I  must 
farm,"  and  takes  his  compass,  or  theodolite,  or  whatever  in- 
strument he  uses,  and  goes  and  measures  ofi'the  line  between 
himself  and  one  neighbor.  After  he  has  made  a  very  careful 
measurement,  he  says,  "  Exactly  here  is  the  line,  and  not  one 
ten  thousandth  part  of  an  inch  shall  you  come  on  to  my  land." 
When  he  has  run  the  line  between  himself  and  that  neighbor, 
he  runs  the  line  between  himself  and  the  neighbor  on  anoth- 
er side.  So  he  goes  round  and  round  his  whole  farm,  mark- 
ing out  just  where  all  the  lines  are.  Then  he  begins  to  lay 
his  fences.  And  oh !  such  fences !  He  must  have  the  best 
fences  that  can  be  built.  He  never  can  get  them  high  enough. 
He  never  can  be  done  building  fences.  Oftentimes,  when  he 
has  got  them  all  built  up,  he  goes  to  work  and  pulls  them 
do^Ti  again.  And  what  for  ?  Why,  just  so  that  he  can  build 
them  up  again !  He  goes  on  building  them  up  and  puUmg 
them  down,  and  calls  that  farming ! 

Do  you  not  see  the  application  ?  Did  you  never  hear  of 
spiritual  husbandmen  that  were  forever  defining  the  great 
points  of  doctrine ;  forever  discriminating  just  the  line  be- 
tween Calvinism  and  Arminianism,  or  between  High  Calvm- 
ism  and  Low  Calvinism ;  forever  di-awing  the  distinction  be- 
tween High-Church  and  Low-Church  of  every  sort ;  forever 
running  round  and  roimd  boundaries  of  the  kingdom  of  God, 
making  this  place  right  here,  and  fixing  that  crook  there ; 
building  and  rebuilding  the  middle  walls  of  partition  be- 
tween one  sect  and  another,  but  never  sowing  and  never 
reaping?  Their  farms  are  untilled  and  unfruitful.  Their 
fences  are  all  good,  however.  There  is  very  little  tilth  any 
where  on  their  land;  but  ah!  they  know  just  where  their 
lines  run,  and  exactly  where  they  stop.  Do  you  never  find 
men  of  this  kind  in  our  day,  who  are  forever  building  fences, 
and,  like  the  men  who  built  the  Tower  of  Babel,  trying  to 
build  them  so  high  that  they  will  touch  the  very  heaven  ? 
There  never  was  a  fence  that  would  keep  moles  and  vermin 

n.— R 


258  God's  Husbandry. 

out  of  a  man's  farm ;  and  there  never  was  a  fence  that  would 
keep  hawks  off  from  it.  Birds  will  fly  over  any  fence  you 
can  build.  The  best  thing  a  farmer  can  do  is  to  take  such 
care  of  his  soil  as  to  have  a  harvest  so  rich  that  he  will  be 
able  to  sj)are  a  little  to  vermin  and  birds.  No  church  ever 
had  a  confession  of  faith  or  system  of  doctrine  that  would 
insure  it  against  small  encroachments  and  annoyances.  The 
only  safe  way  is  to  have  so  much  spiritual  culture  in  the 
Church  that  such  minor  troubles  make  little  difference  with 
its  prosperity. 

But  there  is  one  other  class  of  farmers.  They  may  be  call- 
ed Niinrod  farmers — hunting  farmers.  For  you  can  imagine 
a  husbandman  who  would  neglect  to  care  for  his  soil,  and  go 
out  after  squirrels,  and  all  manner  of  vermin  that  were  eating 
his  grain — if  he  had  any  that  they  could  eat ;  who  would  go 
out  to  shoot  weasels  in  the  wall,  foxes  in  the  field,  wolves  in 
the  wood,  and  bears  every  where ;  and  who,  when  he  could 
find  nothing  to  shoot,  would  lie  out  at  night,  watching  for 
raccoons,  and  range  up  and  down  through  the  day,  searching 
for  some  stray  dog,  where  there  should  be  sheep,  but  where 
there  are  none. 

There  are  in  the  Church  what  may  be  called  heresy-hunt- 
ers. They  always  carry  a  rifle — a  spiritual  rifle — under  their 
arm.  You  will  find  them  forever  outlying,  watching  for 
heresy — not  so  much  in  their  own  hearts,  not  so  much  in 
their  own  Church,  not  so  much  in  their  own  minister,  but  in 
other  people's  hearts,  in  other  people's  churches,  in  other  peo- 
ple's ministers.  If  any  man  happens  to  hold  an  opinion  re- 
specting any  doctrine  which  does  not  accord  with  their  own 
peculiar  views,  they  all  spread  abroad  to  run  him  down. 
They  are  taking  care  of,  and  defending,  the  faith !  They  are 
searching  for  foxes,  and  wolves,  and  bears,  that  they  suppose 
are  laying  waste  God's  husbandry !  They  never  do  any 
thing  except  fire  at  other  folks.  I  have  no  doubt  that  Nim- 
rod  was  a  very  good  fellow,  in  his  own  poor,  miserable  way ; 
but  a  Nimrod  minister  is  the  meanest  of  all  sorts  of  hunters! 


God's  Husbandry.  259 

But  let  us  pass  on  to  notice  how  thoroughly  the  Bible  ap- 
propriates every  process  of  husbandry,  and  applies  it  to  spir- 
itual gi-owth,  and  to  derive  from  that  revelation  the  lesson 
of  how  we  may,  by  our  imagination,  look  ujDon  almost  every 
thing  that  takes  place  in  life,  in  such  a  way  that  it  shall  be 
significant  of  some  sort  of  spiritual  state  or  change.  All 
through  the  Bible  you  will  find  that  "■  plowing"  and  "  har- 
rowing" are  employed  in  relation  to  spiritual  things.  "  Sow- 
ing" and  "  tilling"  are  both  of  them  terms  apj^ropriated  to 
spiritual  instruction.  The  "sickle"  and  "reaping" — these 
are  familiar  to  you  in  their  spiritual  acceptation.  "  Thrash- 
ing," and  "grain,"  and  "  chafi"' — these  are  used  continually  in 
the  Scriptures.  "  Gathering,"  and  "  garnering,"  and  "  grind- 
ing"— these  are  set  to  signify  spiritual  truths.  Burning  up 
chaflT,  or  letting  the  wind  blow  it  away,  that  it  may  be  ut- 
terly scattered  and  gone  forever — how  powerfully  are  these 
thmgs  set  forth,  especially  in  the  prophets ! 

Take  another  department — that  of  the  orchard  or  vineyard. 
Mark  the  difference  between  the  wild  and  the  cultivated  vine, 
and  the  wilding  and  the  grafted  plant,  that  is  recognized  in 
the  Bible.  The  process  of  transplanting,  by  which  a  branch 
is  taken  from  its  parent  stem  and  grafted  upon  another ;  by 
which  the  old  trunk  and  root  are  made  to  bear  a  new  top ; 
by  which  the  natural  man  is  made  to  bear  gracious  fruit — 
how  is  that  set  forth  in  the  Word  of  God  ?  The  process  of 
pruning,  by  which  a  certain  wild  luxuriance  of  wood  is  held 
back,  in  order  that  a  greater  degree  of  fruitfulness  may  be 
induced — how  is  that  set  forth  in  the  Bible  ?  Blossoming,  in 
things  in  which  men  have  blossoms,  and  fruit-bearing,  in 
things  in  which  men  bear  fruit — how  are  these  taken  up  and 
appropriated  to  spiritual  uses  in  the  Scriptures  ?  I  can  not  go 
through  the  whole  of  these  examples,  they  are  so  numerous. 

Lastly,  I  wish  to  speak  of  this  subject  in  its  larger  applica- 
tion. The  whole  world,  in  the  Bible,  is  spoken  of  as  being 
God's  husbandry.  Oh,  what  a  breadth  of  tillage  !  Nations 
and  races,  in  all  their  generations,  spread  abroad  through  six 


260  God's  Husbandry. 

thousand  years,  and  flowing  on  endlessly,  so  that  no  proph- 
et's eye  can  discern  the  end  to  come ;  all  the  broad  earth, 
with  its  multiplied  populations — these  are  God's  husbandry. 
God  is  the  Great  Cultivator.  He  looks  out  over  his  vast  es- 
tate— the  world — as  a  man  looks  over  his  smaller  estate. 
All  the  agencies  of  nature  are  for  God.  For  him  the  nations 
are  simple  instruments  of  culture.  Revolutions,  famines,  dis- 
asters, prosperities — all  things  that  check  or  push  forward 
the  growth  of  men,  are  so  many  implements  in  his  hand  by 
which  he  tills  this  great  farm  of  the  earth  ! 

The  end  .of  the  world  is  the  harvest.  Sinners  are  the  chaff 
and  the  weeds.  The  righteous  are  the  good  seed  and  the 
fruit — the  one  to  be  swept  away,  and  the  other  to  be  garner- 
ed up.  At  last  there  shall  come  the  winter,  when  all  things 
shall  cease  and  rest ;  and  the  glory  of  summer  shall  be  in 
heaven,  where  all  which  is  vital,  and  which  carries  its  life, 
like  a  seed,  in  itself,  shall  be  gathered.  When  this  has  taken 
place,  and  the  withered  leaves,  and  the  decaying  stalk,  and 
all  things  else  which  have  come  to  nothing,  have  fallen  to 
the  ground  and  perished,  then  shall  be  the  end ! 

Christian  brethren,  let  us  take  solemn  heed  to  these  signifi- 
cant teachings  of  God's  Word.  We  are  a  part  of  his  hus- 
bandry. "Ye  are  God's  husbandry."  For  you  he  thinks. 
For  you  he  tills.  He  is  breaking  in  your  disposition.  He  is 
preparing  the  soil  of  your  hearts.  He  is  cultivating  you  now 
by  ways  that  make  you  cry  out  with  pain — for  all  plowing  and 
harrowing  is  painful.  The  seed  long  sown  may  not  have  yet 
shown  its  nature.  No  affliction  for  the  present  is  joyous,  but 
rather  grievous;  but  afterward  it  bringeth  forth  the  peace- 
able fruits  of  righteousness.  "  Ye  are  God's  husbandry." 
Rejoice  in  it.  Let  your  bosom  lie  open  to  his  influence  as 
the  soil  lies  open  to  the  sun.  Let  God  do  as  seemeth  him 
good ;  and  by-and-by,  with  all  your  faculties,  with  every  feel- 
ing of  your  nature,  you  shall,  in  the  great  harvest,  bless  God ! 


XII. 

€\)t  BliniQtratinn  nf  Inffuing. 


Preached  in  Plymouth  Church,  Brooklyn,  Sabbath  morning, 
March  22d,  1863. 


The  Ministeation  of  Suffeeing. 


"  And  he  said  unto  me,  These  are  they  which  came  out  of  great  tribulation, 
and  have  washed  their  robes,  and  made  them  white  in  the  blood  of  the 
Lamb." — Rev.,  vii.,  14. 

In  this  scene,  where  figure  is  carried  up  to  symbol,  and  the 
whole  exalted  to  the  utmost  reach  of  imagination,  we  be- 
hold the  glory  of  a  throng  of  radiant  beings  whose  apparel 
dazzles  the  sight,  and  whose  triumj^h  overflows  the  soul. 
They  live  in  the  very  centre  of  joy.  No  care  is  uj)on  them. 
No  burdens  of  ill-borne  labor  weigh  them  down.  They  are 
tied  by  no  bands  to  uncongenial  duties.  They  are  freer  than 
the  birds.  Their  songs  are  more  exhilarant  than  summer 
winds.  Surely  tfiese  are  the  favorite  children  of  heaven,  born 
of  purity  into  purity,  without  experience  of  evil,  pressed  for- 
ward in  this  sacred  vision  to  show  how  glorious  they  are  who 
have  kept  their  first  estate  of  heavenly  holiness.  As  such  the 
revelator  gazed  upon  them ;  and  as  the  songs  of  lofty  triumph 
ceased  for  a  moment,  the  guiding  angel  questioned  him, 
"  What  are  these  that  are  arrayed  in  white  robes  ?  Whence 
came  they  ?"  We  may  imagine  the  rapt  apostle,  startled  by 
the  intimation  of  this  question,  as  if  he  should  have  known 
them,  and  gazing  on  them  fixedly  and  long.  But  not  one  did 
he  recognize.  No  earthly  care  was  written  on  the  flaming 
brow  of  any.  No  dull  wrinkles  showed  the  channels  through 
which  griefs  had  flowed.  Surely  he  had  never  seen  them ! 
There  was  no  earthly  man  that  could  find  out  any  one  of 
these. 

Then  spake  the  angel :  "  These  are  they  which  came  out 


26-1  The  Ministration  of  Suffering. 

of  great  tribulation,  and  have  washed  their  robes,  and  made 
them  white  in  the  blood  of  the  Lamb." 

The  raiment  signifies  the  whole  state  and  character.  Here 
it  is  symbolic.  The  blood  signifies  the  sufiei'ing  of  mortal 
human  life.  And  the  whole  declaration  is,  that  this  glorious 
fellowship  of  noble  singers,  the  radiant  brotherhood  of  tri- 
umphing saints,  were  exalted  to  their  heavenly  glory  and 
perfectness  through  the  natural  and  earthly  steps  of  sancti- 
fied sufiering.  This  scene  is  but  a  picture  under  which  you 
might  write  the  words  of  the  Master :  "  In  this  world  ye 
shall  have  tribulation ;  but  be  of  good  cheer :  I  have  over- 
come the  world." 

A  great  lesson  to  be  derived  from  this  vision  is  the  true 
moral  result  of  sanctified  sufiering.  There  is  another  less 
considered,  but  perhaps  equally  important  truth — the  great 
fellowship  to  which  sufiering  brings  men ;  the  final  unity  of 
sufierers  in  a  sphere  of  celestial  glory. 

The  contrast  between  sufiering  on  earth  and  its  fruits  in 
heaven  are  wonderful,  and  ought  to  be  kept  constantly  to- 
gether, so  that  the  darkness  of  the  one  shall  be  interpreted 
by  the  light  of  the  other ;  that  we  shall  not  feel  that  sorrows 
have  ended  their  course  when  aching  ceases ;  that  we  shall 
not  for  a  moment  be  left  to  believe  that  all  the  fruit  of  sufier- 
ing is  that  which  we  pluck  hitherward.  "We  should  know 
that  sufiferings  produce  their  final  results  only  after  we  are 
disembodied,  and  stand  on  the  heavenly  plane  in  the  glorious 
fellowship  of  the  redeemed.  Then  it  will  be  made  known  to 
us  that  these,  and  all  of  them,  came  out  of  great  tribulation, 
and  washed  their  robes,  and  made  them  white  in  the  blood 
of  the  Lamb  by  the  maintenance  of  their  faith ;  by  their  en- 
deavors to  live  according  to  God's  commandments;  by  un- 
dergoing pain,  and  self-denial,  and  hardness  as  good  soldiers ; 
by  accepting  providential  afilictions  ;  by  cleansing  their  dis- 
positions and  purifying  their  hearts ;  by  suffering  death  it- 
self The  marvelous  economy  of  earthly  sufiering,  rightly 
understood,  is  an  economy  of  cleansing  and  of  beautifying. 


The  Ministkation  of  Suffering.  265 

It  is  a  lustration,  and  is  preliminary  to  a  state  of  glorifica- 
tion. 

Let  us,  in  some  few  points,  contrast  sufieriug  on  earth 
with  its  fruits  in  heaven. 

1.  Earthly^ufiei'mg_  seems^  to  come  either  as  a  venggaoCfi.- 
'or  as  a  calamity  ujDon  men.  It  is  still  a  surprise  until  we 
have  been  long  wonted  to  it.  But  the  heavenly  side,  as  dis- 
closed in  the  apocalyptic  vision,  shows  that  suffering  ordina- 
rily comes  neither  as  a  vengeance  nor  as  a  calamity;  for, 
although  we  may  understand  that  God  sometimes  employs 
suffering  for  purposes  of  punishment,  yet  such  an  employ- 
ment of  it  is  speciaL  Suffering  is  intercalated  upon  the 
course  of  nature,  and  is  part  of  a  universal  experience. 
Storms  may  be  most  destroying,  overflowing  the  land,  tear- 
ing up  foundations,  sweeping  away  bridges,  and  submerging 
harvests ;  but  this  result  of  storms  is  exceptional.  The  fall 
of  rain  and  the  sweep  of  winds  are  a  part  of  the  economy  of 
mercy.  It  is  not  for  destruction,  but  for  benefit.  And  so 
sufferings  may,  at  times,  in  the  hands  of  God,  be  punitive,  but 
ordinarily  they  are  not.  They  are  a  part  of  God's  design  for 
the  education  of  men  in  this  world.  They  are  pangs  of  birth 
into  higher  states.  Suffering  is  intended  to  make  us  let  go 
of  things  that  are  lower,  and  to  rise  a  grade  higher.  The 
earthly  seeming  and  the  heavenly  reality,  if  you  could  con- 
trast them,  are  in  wonderful  opposition.  Here  it  seems  as  if 
God  were  angry ;  but  in  heaven  it  is  seen  that  he  was  deal- 
ing in  mercy.  Here  it  seems  as  if  great  disaster  had  over- 
whelmed us ;  but  there  the  breaking  of  the  cloud  over  us  ap- 
pears as  the  waters  of  a  bath  from  which  we  shall  emerge 
purer,  cleaner,  and  more  manly. 

2.  Suffering  seems  to  some  contrary  to  the  course  of  na- 
liure ;  an  interruption  and  violation  of  natural  order;  but  the 

revelation  of  the  effects  of  suffering  upon  the  future  state 
shows  that  it  is  in  accordance  with  the  course  of  nature.  It 
would  seem  rational  to  suppose  that  God  built  the  enginery 
of  the  human  mind  for  happiness ;  that  the  way  of  growth 


26Q  The  Ministration  of  Suffering. 

ought  not  to  be  through  bafflings ;  that  men  should  not  find 
their  stability  by  overthrow,  and  their  liberty  by  restraint. 
At  first  view  every  thing  ai3i:»arently  tends  toward  freedom 
and  full  development.  Men  fail  to  see,  however,  that  while 
there  is  one  tendency  toward  liberty,  there  is  another  toward 
restraint. 

Imagine  a  tree  expostulating  with  an  orchardist,  and  say- 
ing, "  Why  is  this  oft-coming  of  the  knife?  Is  it  not  the  na- 
ture of  a  tree  to  grow  ?  I  am  shooting  out  branches  on  ev- 
ery side,  and  upward,  according  to  the  law  of  nature ;  and 
wherefore  am  I  thus  pruned  continually  ?"  Symmetry  is  in 
the  mind  of  the  pian  that  trains  the  tree,  and  it  must  grow 
for  that  very  sake,  and  must  be  cut  back  for  that  very  sake, 
though  symmetry  is  not  in  the  thought  of  the  tree.  And  to 
symmetry  is  added  something  higher  yet  —  fruit  —  though 
that  is  not  in  the  thought  of  the  tree,  but  only  of  the  or- 
chardist. He  nurtures  his  trees  for  these  ends,  but  blind  na- 
ture knows  nothing  about  them. 

If  you  consider  only  this  life,  it  would  seem  as  if  suflfering 
ought  not  to  have  been  a  part  of  the  course  of  nature ;  it 
would  seem  as  if,  God  having  ordained  the  body  with  all  its 
functions  and  faculties,  the  natural  process  of  growth  would 
be  an  easy  and  jDrogressive  evolution  by  such  arrangements 
as  should  be  devoid  of  sufiering.  But  actual  human  experi- 
ence shows  exactly  the  reverse.  If  any  thing  can  be  shown 
by  the  indications  and  facts  of  nature,  it  is  that  man  never 
grows  to  a  full  man's  estate  without  the  ministration  of  suf- 
fering ;  and  that  sufiTering  is  a  part  of  nature,  or  it  could  not 
be  universal. 

3.  The  contrast  between  the  earthly  appearance  of  sufier- 
ing as  something  that  weakens  and  beats  us  down,  and  the 
glorious  light  of  the  heavenly  side,  is  very  striking ;  for  while 
on  earth  sufiering  seems,  in  all  its  immediate  tendencies,  to 
take  away  from  man,  it  is,  in  point  of  fact,  adding  to  him. 
It  seems  to  beat  him  down ;  but  when  we  look  forward  to 
the  full  disclosure,  we  find  that  it  is  building  him  up.     It 


The  Ministration  of  Suffering.  267 

■would  seem  that  to  pnt  a  garment  in  blood  would  be  to 
make  it  any  thing  but  white,  but  the  saints  have  made  theirs 
white  in  the  blood  of  the  Lamb.  So  on  earth  it  seems  as 
though  strength  would  be  gained  in  any  way  rather  than  by 
the  flail,  but  it  is  disclosed  that  it  is  by  threshing  that  men 
gain  strength. 

What  can  difier  more  than  the  aspect  of  the  oncoming  and 
the  whole  phenomenon  of  a  summer's  rain,  and  its  actual  aft- 
er results?  The  sun  goes  out.  Birds  cease  their  singing. 
Low  and  terrific  sounds  and  voices,  vengeful  thunders,  are  in 
the  air.  Great  winds  come  as  avant  couriers^  sweeping  on- 
ward, and  causing  the  trees  to  groan  and  writhe  as  if  in  pain. 
Weakly  leaves  are  shredded  oflT  and  hurled  hither  and  thith- 
er. All  beasts  hide  themselves.  Every  thing  looks  dark  as 
the  judgment  day.  Then  comes,  with  mighty  roar,  the  out- 
pouring and  beating  rain,  that  still  farther  shreds  oif  the 
leaves,  and  tears  the  trees,  and  beats  down  the  grass,  and 
overwhelms  the  grain,  and  dishevels  the  flowers.  In  the 
midst  of  this  storm  let  a  man  look  out,  and  he  will  skeptical- 
ly say,  "  Is  this  the  refreshment  of  nature  ?  Is  this  the  cup 
that  is  put  to  the  lips  of  flowers  that  they  may  drink  and  be 
revived  ?"  And  yet,  let  the  hour  go  by ;  let  all  its  gloomy 
works  and  seemings  be  swept  away  with  it ;  let  the  sun  re- 
appear ;  let  the  birds  begin  to  sing  again ;  let  the  trees  shake 
themselves  of  drops  of  rain ;  let  the  grass  lift  itself  up  once 
more,  and  then  man  will  instinctively  praise  God  for  that 
which  before  seemed  to  be  only  a  process  of  destruction. 
The  storm  seems  to  have  gone ;  but  it  has  not  gone.  Those 
things  which  at  first  appeared — all  the  external  signs  of  fury 
— these  have  passed  away ;  and  now  the  storm  is  at  work  on 
the  root ;  and  every  blade  of  grass  is  drawing,  and  every  tree 
is  pumping,  and  every  flower  is  drinking.  Who  could  have 
cleansed  the  air  as  that  breathmg  wind  has  ?  Who  could 
have  swept  the  vapors  out  of  the  heavens  as  that  tornado 
has  ?  Who,  by  any  appliance  of  human  skill,  could  have 
watered  the  acres  as  that  rain  has  ?    Who  could  have  given 


268  The  Ministeation  of  Suffering. 

new  life  to  the  wasting  herbage  as  that  thunder-storm  has, 
which  went  tramping  through  the  valley  and  the  wilderness 
apparently  a  messenger  of  evil  ?  One  hour  after  it  is  gone 
all  things  silently  thank  God  that,  one  hour  before,  shud- 
dered, and  trembled,  and  said, "  Hast  thou  forgotten  to  be 
gracious  ?" 

So  it  is  with  the  ministrations  of  suffering  and  sorrow. 
While  the  storm  pelts,  men  shrink.  While  the  thunder 
sounds,  they  slink  down.  While  the  tempest  rages,  it  is  as 
if  they  were  ruined.  But  when  the  violence  abates  a  little, 
they  begin  to  lift  up  their  head,  and  to  perceive  that  it  was 
not  all  dark,  that  it  was  not  all  thunder,  that  it  was  not  all 
beating,  that  there  was  an  element  of  good  in  it ;  and  gradu- 
ally they  learn  the  sweet  bounty  and  benefit  that  God  meant 
to  bestow  upon  them  by  afflictions. 

4.  The  seeming  cruelty  of  much  of  suffering,  and  the  un- 
naturalness  of  it,  are  contrasted  with  great  relief  with  this  vis- 
ion of  the  final  state  of  those  who  have  suffered  in  this  world. 
The  fatherliness  and  benevolence  of  suffering  does  not  ap- 
pear in  its  mere  earthly  relations.  In  heaven  it  is  clearly 
pictured.  There  we  see  what  it  has  wrought  out.  It  would 
seem,  often,  as  if  joys  blossomed  only  to  be  plucked ;  as  if  af- 
fections were  developed  only  to  be  denied  that  which  they 
crave ;  as  if  heart-hunger  grew  for  the  very  sake  of  famine ; 
as  if  God  put  concentrated  life  into  tender  hearts  only  to  tear 
and  lacerate  them. 

If  you  separate  human  experience  into  sections,  and  look 
at  it,  there  is  something  terrible  in  the  flight  of  suffering.  I 
gather  together  in  my  imagination  all  that,  since  the  days  of 
Rachel,  have  mourned  and  refused  to  be  comforted  because 
their  children  were  not.  If  the  death  of  children  had  happen- 
ed only  in  my  life  and  yours — if  it  was  a  woe  that  belonged 
merely  to  a  special  state  of  civilization,  it  would  not  be  so  ap- 
palling ;  but  from  the  beginning  of  the  world  down  through 
all  the  thousands  of  years  it  has  been  computed  that  more 
than  one  half  of  the  human  family  have  been  born  to  die  in 


The  Ministeation  of  Suffeeing.  269 

infancy.  It  is  not  so  very  mucli  if  you  simply  think  of  chil- 
dren's dying ;  but  every  child  that  dies  carries  anguish  to  at 
least  two  hearts.  And  when  I  gather  together  all  the  myriad 
men  and  women  that  have  lived  to  be  childless  throughout  all 
the  continents  of  the  earth,  and  set  them  in  long  perspective, 
and  think  that  God  ordained  the  race,  and  fitted  the  heart 
exquisitely  to  love,  and  to  suffer  in  the  bereavements  of  love, 
and  that  the  grand  processional  experience  of  time  has  been 
devastation,  devastation,  devastation,  so  that  the  human 
family  has  been  cut  in  two,  and  one  half  has  been  given  ap- 
parently to  be  snatched  away  that  the  other  half  might 
mourn  with  grief  that  could  not  be  comforted,  I  can  not  but 
marvel  at  the  dispensations  of  Providence. 

When  the  Venetians  besieged  Athens,  they  threw  their 
miscreant  shot  into  the  Acropolis,  with  all  its  treasures  of 
art,  and  these  messengers  of  destruction  beat  down  those  no- 
ble marbles  of  Phidias,  casting  them  from  the  places  where 
they  had  stood  peerless  in  glory  for  hundreds  of  years,  break- 
ing and  scattering  them.  Afilictions  seem  to  me  to  be 
thrown  into  families  where  apparently  their  effect  is  like  a 
bomb  when  it  strikes  in  the  midst  of  exquisite  statues — blmd, 
heedless,  devastating. 

If  there  were  no  revelation,  there  would  be  but  one  way  of 
philosophizing  on  this  subject ;  that  would  be  to  roll  w^  life's 
scroll,  and  seal  it,  and  throw  it  into  oblivion.  When  I  look 
at  the  history  of  human  suffering  in  all  its  phases,  from  the 
dawn  of  creation  to  the  present  time,  I  am  almost  overwhelm- 
ed by  the  contemplation.  The  whole  earth  has  groaned  and 
travailed  in  pain  until  now.  Human  life  has  been  a  grand 
march  of  suffering.  The  race  is  a  vast  army ;  they  have 
tramped  to  their  own  music  —  a  music  of  sighs,  and  sobs, 
and  sorrows ;  the  whole  creation  has  been  swinging  round  in 
its  wild  and  darkling  circuits  until  now.  Heaven  has  heard 
its  sad  symphonies  from  first  to  last.  Without  a  revelation 
it  is  horrible  and  harrowing ;  and  they  that  think  the  most 
about  it  come  the  nearest  to  going  crazy. 


270  The  Ministration  of  Suffering. 

But  all !  when  you  look  up,  and  find  that  suffering  is  only 
the  evolution  of  a  natural  state  of  growing,  and  that  it  has 
distinctly  a  work  to  accomj)lish,  the  whole  aspect  of  the  sub- 
ject is  changed.  As  the  outside  coverings  or  leaves  of  a  bud 
administer  to  the  growth  of  that  bud  for  a  certain  time,  and 
then  drop  off,  so  suffering  administers  to  the  growth  of  the 
mind  a  certain  time,  and  then  ceases  its  action  as  an  instru- 
ment of  pain.  It  has  a  God-designed  function  to  perform ; 
one  which,  though  it  is  unpleasant  in  the  beginning,  is  glori- 
ous in  its  results ;  one  which,  although  it  is  hard  to  be  borne, 
is  munificent  in  its  final  remuneration.  God  whispers  of 
these  things,  if  we  could  only  hear  him :  "  No  chastening  for 
the  present  seemeth  to  be  joyous,  but  grievous."  We  did 
not  need  to  be  told  that ;  but  we  did  need  to  be  told  that 
Christian  complacency  in  divine  Providence  does  not  require 
that  we  should  not  suffer.  Some  seem  to  think  that  a  man, 
to  be  a  Christian,  ought  to  be  able  not  to  suffer  when  suffer- 
ing comes ;  but  the  ache  of  suffering  is  a  part  of  its  medi- 
cine. You  might  as  well  say  that  manliness  requires  that  a 
man  should  drink  bitter  draughts,  and  not  taste  them,  and 
call  them  sweet,  as  to  say  that  Christianity  requires  that  a 
man  should  bear  suffering,  and  say  that  it  is  not  suffering. 
It  requires  no  such  thing.  It  does  not  even  require  that  we 
should  illumine  suffering  so  that  for  the  present  it  shall  seem 
joyous.  The  Christian,  when  his  companion  is  taken  from 
him,  is  not  required  to  say,  "  I  am  so  wonderfully  strength- 
ened that  I  have  no  suffering."  A  mother  is  not  called  upon, 
when  she  has  given  up  her  child  to  God,  to  say, "  I  suffer 
none."  You  have  a  right  to  suffer.  And  God  has  been 
pleased  to  say  that,  though  no  afilictions  for  the  present  are 
joyous,  but  grievous,  nevertheless  afterward  they  yield  the 
peaceable  fruit  of  righteousness  unto  them  that  are  exercised 
thereby. 

Human  nature  is  very  much  like  some  elements  of  vegeta- 
tion. In  tapioca,  one  of  the  most  harmless  of  all  articles  of 
food,  there  is  one  of  the  most  deadly  of  all  poisons.     But  the 


The  Ministration  of  Suffering.  271 

poison  is  of  such  a  volatile  nature  that  when  it  is  subjected  to 
heat  it  escapes,  and  leaves  only  the  nutriment  of  the  starch. 
I  think  that  the  heai*t  of  man  originally  is  full  of  poison,  but 
that,  when  it  is  tried  by  affliction,  little  by  little  the  poison, 
the  rancor,  the  virus  exhales,  and  leaves  all  the  rest  whole- 
some indeed. 

5.  Earthly  suffering  seems  to  weaken  men,  to  discourage 
them,  and  to  destroy  them ;  but  the  fact  is  that  it  does  not 
really  destroy  or  weaken  them.  That  part  in  us  which  suf- 
fering weakens  is  usually  that  very  part  which  ought  to  be 
weakened. 

The  great  trouble  in  turning  flax  into  thread  or  cloth  is 
caused  by  that  which  gives  the  green  plant  its  very  power ; 
for  when  the  flax  is  growing  it  needs  two  things :  one  is  its 
ligneous  or  woody  structure,  and  the  other  is  its  gluten.  But 
when  it  has  grown  enough,  and  man  wants  it  to  make  gar- 
ments, to  furnish  the  queen  in  the  palace  and  the  peasant  in 
the  cottage,  he  must  get  rid  of  these  two  things.  And  how 
is  the  flax  separated  from  them  ?  It  is  plucked  and  thrown 
into  the  field,  that,  under  the  influence  of  repeated  rains  and 
dews,  the  wood  may  rot;  then  the  flax  is  taken  and  put 
through  the  brakes  until  every  particle  of  the  stiffness  and 
strength  that  it  had  is  destroyed,  and  all  but  the  stringy 
fibres  can  be  shaken  to  the  winds ;  then  it  is  subjected  to 
certain  chemical  processes  by  which  the  gluten  is  taken 
away;  and  not  tUl  then  is  it  m  a  proper  condition  to  be 
carried  to  the  spmning-wheel  and  the  loom,  and  manufac- 
tured into  materials  for  use. 

So  is  it  with  men.  There  are  a  great  many  qualities  which 
they  need  up  to  a  certain  point,  but  which  beyond  that  are 
a  disadvantage  to  them.  We  need  a  given  amount  of  self- 
will  and  independence;  but  after  these  qualities  have  been 
carried  to  a  certain  point,  the  necessity  lor  them  measur- 
ably ceases,  and  there  must  be  superinduced  on  them  oppo- 
site qualities.  For  man  is  made  up  of  contraries.  He  is  to 
be  as  firm  as  iron,  and  as  yielding  as  silk ;  he  is  to  be  perse- 


272  The  Ministration  of  Suffering. 

vering,  and  yet  most  ready  to  give  up ;  he  is  to  be  as  stead- 
fast as  a  mountaiu,  and  yet  easy  to  be  entreated ;  he  is  to 
abhor  evil,  and  yet  to  love  with  an  ineffable  love ;  he  is  to  be 
courao-eous,  and  yet  to  have  that  fear  of  the  Lord  which  is 
the  beginning  of  wisdom.  Certain  qualities,  when  they  have 
served  their  purpose,  must  give  place  to  opposite  qualities. 
Afflictions,  under  the  supervision  of  divine  Providence,  are 
working  out  in  those  that  are  exercised  thereby  beneficent 
results;  so  that  suffering,  while  it  seems  frequently  to  be 
wasting  and  destroying  men,  is  only  wasting  and  destroying 
that  part  of  them  which  they  are  better  without  than  with. 

An  inexperienced  young  miser,  we  will  suppose,  mherits 
the  Almaden  mine.  Great  heaps  of  ore  are  thrown  out,  and 
he  goes  and  looks  at  it,  and  says, "  I  am  a  mountain  rich." 
He  gives  directions  to  have  this  ore  prepared  for  market. 
The  laborers  take  it  and  throw  it  into  the  furnace ;  and  he 
watches  the  process  with  greedy  eye,  saying, "  What !  put- 
tmg  my  precious  silver  in  the  fire  ?"  As  it  begins  to  melt, 
and  flow  out,  and  grow  less  and  less,  he  is  appalled  to  see 
how  it  is  wasting  away.  But  the  men  that  smelt  it  laugh, 
and  say, "  You  have  lost  nothing ;  you  have  gained  by  as 
much  as  it  has  shrunk ;  for  it  was  nothing  but  ore,  and  nine 
tenths  of  it  was  good  for  nothing,  and  that  which  was  good 
was  so  tied  up  that  it  could  not  serve  you  at  all.  It  was 
necessary  that  you  should  lose  nine  tenths  of  it  in  order  that 
you  might  have  the  benefit  of  the  other  tenth." 

In  this  life,  that  which  seems  to  men  to  be  wasted  and  de- 
stroyed is  frequently  that  which  they  can  better  afford  to 
lose  than  to  keep. 

6.  Suffering  on  earth  seems  to  set  men  apart  from  their 
fellows.  Sometimes  it  puts  them  into  obscurity.  It  often 
throws  them  into  banishment.  It  is  an  experience  full  of 
solitude,  voluntary  and  yet  inevitable.  Every  heart  knows 
its  own  bitterness.  There  is  a  delicacy  in  grief,  often.  And 
though  sometimes  it  is  clamorous  and  vocal,  oftener  it  is 
silent.     But  there  is  a  process  quietly  going  on,  though  it 


The  Ministration  of  Suffering.  273 

may  not  be  apparent,  by  which  those  who  seem  to  be  sepa- 
rated in  the  present  shall  in  the  future  be  gathered  together 
by  sorrow.  Those  that  weep  apart  on  earth  shall  joy  to- 
gether in  heaven.  Those  who  in  their  sorrows  are  cast  out 
from  the  sympathies  of  their  fellow-men  shall  be  gathered 
into  the  fellowship  and  sympathy  of  the  heavenly  host.  This 
separation  and  disintegration  are  only  apparent.  Really,  it 
is  a  preparation  for  fellowship  in  the  world  to  come. 

And  it  is  close  upon  many  of  you.  Your  salvation  is 
nearer  than  when  you  believed.  You  are  not  far  from  that 
host  that  waits  for  you.  I  believe  that  there  is  a  ministra- 
tion of  spirits.  I  believe  that  there  is  a  heavenly  multitude 
that*take  cognizance  of  our  going  out  and  coming  in.  I  do 
not  pretend  that  we  have  any  thing  like  scientific  evidence 
on  this  point ;  but  I  hold  to  the  general  truth  that  there  is  a 
connection  between  the  spirits  that  are  in  heaven,  whom  God 
employs  in  ministrations  of  mercy,  and  men  on  earth ;  and  I 
believe  that  God  knows,  as  they  know,  that  there  are  weary- 
eyed  watchers  and  sufferers  here  below  who  are  not  a  hand's- 
breadth  from  their  translation.  It  can  not  be  long  before 
your  sorrows  shall  end  and  your  eternal  joy  shall  begin. 
Then  be  patient.  Is  the  storm  fierce?  Does  the  rain  beat 
down  heavily  ?  It  is  almost  past.  The  time  of  the  singing 
of  birds  is  at  hand.  There  is  a  great  deal  to  be  borne  in  suf- 
fering, but  there  is  a  great  deal  that  is  worth  suffering  for ; 
and  if,  when  called  to  go  through  affliction,  you  could  only 
feel, "  This  is  God's  bath  by  which  I  am  being  cleansed,"  it 
would  be  shorn  of  all  that  which  makes  us  shrink  from  it. 

"  Ah !"  many  of  you  will  say,  "  there  is  the  very  trouble. 
If  my  heart  were  really  softened;  if  I  felt  that  God's  hmder- 
ances,  and  disappointments,  and  thwartings,  and  bereave- 
ments of  affection  were  softening  me,  and  making  me  bet- 
ter, I  should  have  some  comfort ;  but  they  seem  to  be  hard- 
ening me." 

Sometimes  there  are  illusory  effects  of  trouble.  There  is 
an  element  of  exhaustion,  and  there  is  a  reactionary  element, 

n.— s 


274  The  Ministration  of  Suffering. 

by  which  those  in  suffering  are  wrongly  judged.  Frequent- 
ly, when  persons  seem  to  have  grown  harder,  they  are  not 
harder.  They  have  merely  lost  the  jDOwer  of  much  feelmg. 
A  person  is  not  necessarily  hard  because  he  does  not  feel. 
His  want  of  feeling  is  often  nothing  but  nature  insisting  upon 
suffering  no  more  till  it  has  had  an  opportunity  to  recuperate 
itself.  I  have  known  persons  who,  after  great  trouble,  could 
not  read  the  Bible,  and  did  not  wish  to  pray,  or  go  to  an  as- 
sembly of  God's  people.  Singing  was  discord  m  their  ear. 
And  so  it  was  with  them  sometimes  for  weeks  and  months. 
But  it  was  simply  nature  attempting  to  restore  their  wasted 
energies.     There  was  no  moral  character  in  it. 

But  where  there  is,  besides  this,  a  rebellious  disposition ; 
where  one  is  conscious  that  over  and  above  this  the  heart  is 
becoming  sour,  morose,  and  evil,  there  is  reason  for  alarm  and 
watchfulness.  For  next  to  the  magnitude  of  the  benefit  of 
suffering  well  borne  is  the  magnitude  of  the  mischief  of  suf- 
fering ill  borne.  On  the  one  hand,  it  sweetens,  and  lifts  up, 
and  glorifies ;  on  the  other  hand,  it  darkens,  and  destroys,  and 
whelms  in  night  forever.  We  are  to  take  care.  It  is  our 
business  to  see  to  it  that  suffermgdoes  us  good. 

But  let  us  not  suppose  that  we  can  always  tell  how  much 
good  suffering  does.  Persons  sometimes  say, "  I  am  not  con- 
scious of  receivmg  much  benefit  from  suffering.  I  submit  to 
it ;  I  endeavor  to  accept  it  as  an  administration  of  divine  wis- 
dom, and  I  give  myself  up  to  be  done  with  as  it  may  seem 
good  in  God's  sight ;  but  I  do  not  see  that  much  good  is 
wrought  in  my  case ;  and  why  should  I  suffer  ?"  That  is  for 
the  future  to  tell  you.  God  does  not  tell  you.  "  What  I  do 
know,"  he  says,  "  ye  know  not."  It  is  not  possible  that  there 
should  be  a  disclosure  in  this  life,  except  in  faint  rays,  of  what 
the  full  and  final  result  of  suffering  is  to  be. 

I  should  like  to  have  any  man  attempt  to  interpret  to  a 
worm  what  it  is  going  to  be  when  it  is  a  butterfly.  Where 
is  there  a  foreshadowing  analogy,  or  any  thing,  to  indicate  to 
it  what  it  is  coming  to  in  its  fuller  form  ?    And  how  can  any 


The  Ministration  of  Suffering.  275 

one  disclose  what  is  to  be  evolved  -when  God's  -work  is  com- 
pleted in  this  life  ?  For,  although  we  may  know  something, 
our  knowledge  is  fragmentary  and  limited.  And  it  is  a  glo- 
rious consolation  to  believe  that  sufferings  forgotten  are  not 
less  causes  of  good  than  those  that  are  remembered,  and  that 
sufferings  which  apparently  leave  but  little  trace  are  work- 
ing out  in  us  great  and  blessed  results  in  the  kingdom  to 
which  we  are  hastening. 

Sufferings  which  tame  the  rankness  and  vehemence  of  our 
natural  faculties,  which  subdue  the  arrogance  of  our  nature, 
should  teach  us  sympathy  with  men,  and  make  us  kind.  Vis- 
ible sufferings  appeal  to  our  natural  generosity ;  but  we  sel- 
dom learn  how  to  sympathize  with  the  invisible  sufferings  of 
the  soul  until  we  have  been  inwardly  tried.  Nothing  joins 
men  together  like  common  suffering.  In  this  life,  even,  we 
have  a  foretaste  of  that  fellowship  of  the  future  of  which  I 
have  been  speaking. 

Sufferings  breed  gentleness.  They  take  away  asperity. 
They  reduce  the  mind  to  a  finer  edge.  They  bring  men 
through  a  sense  of  their  own  infirmities  to  more  charity  for 
their  fellow-men,  by  enabling  them  to  read  again  in  others' 
experience  their  own  sorrows.  Many  men  are  harsh,  exact- 
ing, and  cruel  until  they  are  made  sufferers,  who  then  become 
sweeter-minded,  and  more  tender  and  gracious.  You  can  see 
that  men  are  made  pure  by  suffering. 

It  is  a  source  of  self-knowledge.  It  teaches  us  our  help- 
lessness in  our  best  estate.  Oh,  how  strong  is  the  natural 
man,  and  how  weak  is  the  experienced  man !  How  strong 
hope  makes  us,  and  how  feeble  experience  makes  us !  With- 
out experience,  how  men  feel  that  they  can  build  against 
chance !  how  they  mean  to  be  wise,  and  strong,  and  rich !  how 
they  mark  out  their  ways  of  life,  meaning  not  to  make  the 
mistakes  of  other  men !  It  makes  me  think  of  a  mouse  in  a 
field,  that  says, "  I  will  dig  so  deep  that  nothing  shall  find  me. 
I  will  build  my  house  behind  this  tuft  of  grass,  and  nobody 
shall  ever  suspect  that  here  is  a  mouse's  house."    And  al^ 


276  The  Ministration  of  Suffering. 

ready,  at  the  other  end  of  the  field,  the  ox-team  and  the  plow 
are  moving,  and  soon  they  sweep  past,  burymg  the  little 
house,  mouse  and  all,  so  deep  that  he  never  knows  what  has 
happened  to  him.  But  such  talk  from  a  mouse  in  a  field  is 
wisdom  itself  compared  to  the  declaration  of  a  man  who 
says,  "  I  mean  to  make  no  mistakes ;  I  will  be  rich,  and 
strong,  and  wise,  and  high ;  and  calamities  shall  not  touch 
me."  When  such  men  have  built  the  foundations  of  their 
life,  confident  that  they  shall  escape  trouble,  in  a  moment 
the  law  of  social  liability  takes  hold  of  them,  and  they  are 
overborne  and  destroyed.  Not  for  want  of  wisdom,  not  by 
reason  of  unwise  planning  on  their  part,  but  because  they  are 
connected  with  other  men  who  do  not  plan  wisely.  It  is  not 
necessary  that  you  should  build  your  foundations  poorly  to 
have  your  house  come  down.  You  may  build  them  well,  and 
your  neighbor  may  build  his  so  that  yours  shall  sag  in  spite 
of  you.  Under  such  circumstances,  it  is  not  your  careless- 
ness, but  his,  that  brings  your  house  down.  Every  man  is 
liable  to  disasters  that  are  beyond  his  control. 

Besides,  all  men  are  fools — especially  those  who  think  that 
they  are  not.  There  is  no  man  that  can  say,  for  an  hour  or  a 
moment, "  I  am  so  wise  that  I  have  no  need  to  fear."  Self- 
confidence  is  well  for  a  little  way.  It  sustains  men  under 
discouragement,  and  holds  them  up  when  without  it  they 
would  sink  down.  But,  after  all,  the  man  who  builds  against 
time,  and  chance,  and  thick-falling  drops  of  sufiering ;  the 
man  who  thinks  that  he  can  successfully  oppose  himself  to 
the  Almighty,  that  shakes  down  palaces,  and  makes  mount- 
ains burn  at  his  presence,  is  simply  a  fool ;  for  he  is  liable,  at 
any  instant,  to  have  his  property,  and  all  that  belongs  to  him 
in  this  life,  swept  from  him. 

Or,  his  property  may  stand,  and  it  may  be  only  his  heart 
that  is  shot  away.  For  there  is  many  and  many  a  man  who 
builds  his  house  as  the  old  Egyptians  built  their  pyramids. 
Nothing  should  shake  them — no,  nothing.  But  what  was  in 
the  middle  of  them?    Coffins,  and  the  dust  of  royalty.    And 


The  Ministration  of  Suffering.  277    '^ 

there  is  many  a  man  whose  house  contains  only  coffins  and 
the  dust  of  dejDarted  loved  ones.  Where  is  that  wife? 
Where  are  those  children  ?  Where  is  that  brother  or  that 
sister  ?  Where  is  that  friend  ?  The  man's  heart  has  been  des- 
olated ;  and  he  says, "  If  God  had  taken  every  thing  else,  and 
left  them,  I  would  not  have  called  it  affliction."  That  is  it ; 
he  did  not  ask  you  what  you  would  rather  part  with.  You 
had  been  going  on,  and  building  up,  forgetting  that  there  was 
a  point  where  your  career  came  within  the  bounds  of  the  di- 
vine government ;  and  when  the  finger  of  God  was  laid  upon 
that  which  was  precious  to  you,  you  thought  that  the  day  of 
judgment  had  come,  such  was  the  pain  and  anguish  which 
you  experienced. 

Now  every  man  is  open  before  him  with  whom  we  have  to 
do.  No  man  can  guard  himself  against  suffering  in  a  world 
that  is  sin-smitten,  and  shrouded  with  troubles ;  in  a  world 
where  God  educates  men  by  trials  and  afflictions ;  in  a  world 
where  there  is  an  endless  funeral  march,  and  where  sorrow 
beats  the  drum  to  which  all  men  in  the  procession  keep  step. 
In  such  a  world  men  must  suffer,  and  suffer  to  the  end. 

But  oh,  the  cleansing  of  suffering !  God  grant  that  we 
may  have  the  cleansing,  and  not  the  baptism  alone.  God 
grant  that  there  may  be  such  a  cleansing  that  by-and-by,  in 
some  future  world,  another  revelator  shall  stand  and  see  you 
and  yours  shouting  in  the  throng  of  ineffable  glory,  and, 
being  asked  "  Who  are  these,  and  whence  came  they  ?"  shall 
say  of  them  and  you, "  These  are  they  which  came  out  of 
great  tribulation,  and  have  washed  their  robes,  and  made 
them  white  in  the  blood  of  the  Lamb." 

Though,  when  you  look  upon  that  rejoicing  throng,  you 
see  no  face  that  you  ever  knew,  that  is  your  father.  On  earth 
he  was  an  old  man,  bowed  down  and  wrinkled  with  many 
and  many  a  disaster.  You  remember  how  he  appeared  then. 
Now  look  into  that  sainted  face,  and  you  shall  find  no 
wrinkle.  Every  sign  of  the  remembered  weakness  is  gone, 
and  arone  forever. 


'278  The  Ministration  of  Suffering. 

That  is  a  child  of  affliction,  whose  woes  on  earth  were  a 
marvel.  She  seemed  to  have  been  set  apart  for  suffering,  as 
a  rock  on  an  ocean  coast  seems  to  be  a  mark  toward  which 
the  waves  are  aimed.  But  look  now  at  the  fair  celestial 
beauty  of  her  countenance.  Hear  her  sweet  flowing  song. 
There  is  not  one  note  nor  indication  of  all  that  she  sufiered 
here  below.     That  is  past. 

Listen  to  the  words  of  the  Lord  iu  the  closing  verses  of 
this  chapter : 

"  Therefore  are  they  before  the  throne  of  God,  and  serve 
him  day  and  night  in  his  temjile ;  and  he  that  sitteth  on  the 
throne  shall  dwell  among  them.  They  shall  hunger  no  more, 
neither  thirst  any  more — " 

Then  those  yearnings  and  longings  that  will  not  rest  by 
day  or  sleep  by  night — longings  and  yearnings  compared 
with  which  the  body's  hunger  and  thirst  are  as  nothing — 
these  shall  cease. 

"They  shall  hunger  no  more,  neither  thirst  any  more; 
neither  shall  the  sun  light  on  them,  nor  any  heat," 

That  is  spoken  for  the  poor  slave.  Tell  it  to  him,  ye  that 
go  where  he  is.  Tell  him  that  there  is  a  word  of  remem- 
brance for  him  too, 

"  For  the  Lamb  which  is  in  the  midst  of  the  throne  shall 
feed  them,  and  shall  lead  them  unto  living  fountains  of  wa- 
ters"— that  is,  unto  fountains  of  life — "  and  God  shall  wipe 
away  all  tears  from  their  eyes." 

Now  sufier  on.  Be  patient.  Ask  God  to  bless  your 
trouble.  Be  more  anxious  for  manhood  than  for  happiness. 
When  in  trouble,  be  more  anxious  that  God  should  bless  that 
trouble  than  that  he  should  take  it  away;  and  seek  that  it 
may  prepare  you,  not  so  much  for  pleasanter  places  in  this 
life,  as  for  those  higher  seats  and  the  saintly  ceremonies  and 
joys  of  paradise. 


The  Ministration  of  Suffering.  279 


PRAYER. 

O  thou  mighty  One,  Lord  God  of  heaven  and  earth,  we  pre- 
sent ourselves,  humbly  taking  thy  name  upon  our  lips,  invok- 
ing thy  goodness  and  benediction,  and  asking  that  inshining 
light  of  thine  own  mind  by  which  we  shall  be  able  rightly  to 
discern  the  things  of  God,  and  draw  near  to  thee  accej^tably. 
We  are  not  drawn  by  curiosity  to  find  thee,  but  by  infinite 
and  increasing  wants.  Thou  art,  O  God,  our  Father,  and  we 
have  a  right  to  come  to  thee ;  thou  art  our  Savior,  and  we 
have  a  right  to  come  to  thee ;  thou  art  our  Guide  and  Sanc- 
tifier,  and  we  have  a  right  to  come  to  thee ;  and  we  draw 
near  to  thee  in  all  thine  offices  of  mercy  and  redemption. 

We  thank  thee  for  all  thy  bounties  which  are  stored  through- 
out the  year  for  the  wants  of  our  bodies.  We  thank  thee  for 
the  world  and  all  its  pleasant  things.  We  thank  thee  for  the 
varied  seasons  and  their  fruits.  We  thank  thee  yet  more  for 
all  that  munificent  ministration  by  which  our  affections  and 
our  feelings  are  fed  at  thine — for  thou  art  the  bread  on  which 
the  soul  doth  feed.  By  loving  thee,  by  entering  into  divine 
sympathy  witli  thee,  we  are  lifted  up  above  mortality.  We 
become  sons  of  God.  It  doth  not  yet  appear  what  we  shall 
be  by  virtue  of  this  title ;  but  we  know  that  when  he  shall 
appear  we  shall  be  like  him ;  and  we  rejoice  in  the  anticipa- 
tion of  the  glory  of  God  to  be  revealed :  now  hidden,  now 
wrapped  and  infolded  as  in  buds,  but  to  swell  yet,  to  cast 
off  its  hidings  and  bandages,  and  to  break  out  into  glorious 
blossoming  in  a  fairer  land.  There  we  shall  know  even  as 
we  are  known.  There  Ave  shall  cease  our  silent  communing, 
and  with  everlasting  conversation  and  joy,  hold  high  and 
blessed  intercourse  Avith  thee. 

NoAV  Ave  are  walking  A^eiled.  We  are  bearing  our  load 
as  thou  didst  bear  thine.  We  are  seeking  thee  through 
tumult  —  through  trial  —  through  sins  and  sorrows  many. 
We  are  under  stripes  and  chastisements,  but  still  Avithout 
being  forsaken.  We  are  even  cast  doAvn  for  our  A^ery  lift- 
ing ujx  Thou  art  dealing  Avith  us  as  parents  deal  Avith 
children.  Thou  art  preparing  those  Avho  have  faith,  and 
who  jjerseA'ere  unto  the  end,  for  the  fruition  of  that  higher 
glory  which  thou  hast  reserved  for  them  in  heaven.  We 
press  forAvard  tOAvard  it.  What  storm  soever  may  beat 
upon  us,  Avhat  roughness  there  may  be  in  the  road,  what 
trials  there  may  be  on  either  hand,  Ave  haA'e  made  a  coA'enant 
with  our  hearts,  and  we  have  made  a  coA'enant  Avith  thee, 


280  The  Ministration  of  Suffering. 

that  neither  things  present,  nor  things  to  come,  nor  height, 
nor  depth,  nor  any  other  creature,  shall  separate  ns  from  'the 
love  of  God  which  is  in  Christ  Jesus.  We  gave  our  hearts 
as  an  anchor  unto  thee  within  the  vail,  that  we  might  be  held 
steadfast  by  that  which  is  there.  O  Lord  Jesus,  we  look  to 
thee  in  our  helplessness,  in  our  ignorance  profound.  In  all 
our  spiritual  necessities  we  look  to  thee.  Thou  Shepherd, 
guide  thy  flock,  not  according  to  the  wisdom  of  their  asking, 
but  according  to  the  sovereign  wisdom  of  thine  own  heart. 
Guide  every  one  to  that  perfect  peace  which  thou  hast  for 
those  Avho  love  thee.  We  beseech  of  thee  that  thou  wilt 
grant  that  every  one  of  thy  dear  children  may  submit  him- 
self to  the  hands  of  God  in  his  providence,  taking  hardness  as 
a  good  soldier;  taking  afflictions  as  yet  being  in  the  body; 
and  taking  the  experience  which  all  must  have  who  live  in 
this  mortal  life.  Grant  that  we  may  have  that  evercom- 
ing  faith  which  shall  annihilate  time  and  distance  itself,  and 
bring  very  near,  and  nearer  every  day,  the  glorious  realities 
of  the  world  that  awaits  us  just  beyond.  We  have  sent 
thither  many.  How  many  that  Avatched  with  us,  but  that 
have  ceased  to  watch,  stand  dressed  in  the  gloiy  of  the  liv- 
ing God !  How  many  that  toiled  with  us  have  ended  their 
labors !  How  many  that  waited  in  unison  with  us  are  for 
evermore,  with  every  heart-throb,  praising  thee  !  We  would 
draw  none  of  them  back ;  not  the  nearest  companions ;  not 
those  that  were  dearest  to  us,  and  whose  going  cleft  the 
heart  in  twain.  We  rejoice  in  their  escape.  We,  too,  are 
followino-  Avitli  slower  steps  than  we  would  in  the  appointed 
way.  We  are  Avalking  tOAvard  that  land  where  the  glory  of 
God  shall  drive  every  sin  aAvay,  and  where  there  shall  be 
neither  darkness,  nor  crying,  nor  sorrow  for  evermore. 

And  now,  O  Lord,  grantlthat  as  we  march  we  may  succor 
each  other,  bearing  each  other's  burdens.  May  Ave  look 
around  about  us,  and  desire,  and  labor  that  all  to  Avhom  our 
hearts  grieve  may  come  Avith  us — our  children  ;  our  dear  and 
near  friends.  Grant  that  Ave  may  be  unseparated  in  this  high- 
est faith  and  hope  of  immortality.  We  beseech  of  thee  that 
thou  Avilt  grant  unto  all  that  are  in  thy  presence  to-day  a  re- 
newed evidence  of  their  acceptance  Avith  Jesus.  Unveil  thy 
face,  thou  hidden  One,  to  any  that  have  been  long  Avithout 
the  divine  vision.  ReueAV  all  thy  kindness  to  those  who  have 
knoAA'n  thee  and  loved  thee.  May  there  be  hearts  to-day  that 
shall  overfloAV  Avith  chanting  joy,  and  praise  God.  May  there 
be  many  silent  Avitnesses  to-day  of  God's  helpfulness.  May 
there  be  many  to-day  that,  Avith  tears  of  gladness,  shall  heap 


The  Ministration  of  Suffering.  281 

up  offerings  before  God.  Grant  that  there  may  be  many 
who  shall  take  courage  to-day  to  ask  for  favors  which  they 
have  long  needed,  and  for  the  want  of  which  they  have  faint- 
ed. Grant,  O  Lord,  that  to-day  there  may  be  new  covenants 
made,  and  holier  vows  of  consecration  taken.  Grant  that  to- 
day besetting  sins  may  be  easily  laid  aside,  and  that  men  may 
easily  cast  from  them  errors  and  evils.  Grant  that  there  may 
be  gained  victories  over  pride,  selfishness,  and  every  arrant 
way.  And  may  this  be  a  place  of  glorious  outpourings  to 
thy  Spirit.  O,  reap  here  praises  from  thy  dear  peojile,  and 
send  them  away  filled  with  victories  and  rejoicings.  And 
grant  that  this  may  be  indeed  a  Sabbath,  a  soul-rest  long  to 
be  remembered. 

What  art  thou  doing  in  the  heavens  on  this  sweet  day? 
O  Lord  our  God,  we  hear  thee  speaking.  We  behold  the 
course  of  thy  sun.  We  know  thy  meanings.  All  things  are 
prophesying  of  thy  power,  that  silently  shall  come  to  reno- 
vate and  beautify  the  earth.  O  Sun  of  llighteousness,  art 
thou  less  than  this  natural  sun  ?  and  hast  thou  no  genial  in- 
fluence over  us?  and  are  there  no  prophecies  of  spiritual 
good  for  us  ?  Oh,  breathe  forth  the  soft  and  loosening  winds, 
and  give  from  out  of  thine  heart  the  warmth  that  we  need. 
Drive  winter  quite  away  from  every  frigid  soul,  and  give 
signs  of  sprouting  seeds,  until  this  shall  be  the  very  blossom- 
ing garden  of  the  Lord,  and  all  hearts  shall  stand  up  redolent 
of  praise  and  rejoicing  before  thee. 

We  beseech  of  thee,  remember  thy  cause  in  all  the  cliurclies 
of  this  city.  Renew  thy  work  in  them  all.  Teach  thy  serv- 
ants how  to  preach.  May  they  serve  the  Lord,  the  Majesty 
of  heaven  !  Grant,  we  in-aj  thee,  that  revivals,,  with  which 
thou  art  pleased  to  visit  thine  afllicted  land,  may  increase 
and  multiply,  and  that  there  may  be  a  great  and  sovereign 
work  of  God  in  the  turning  of  the  hearts  of  this  great  j^eople. 
Wilt  thou  overrule  the  events  that  are  transpiring,  and  de- 
stroy the  iniquitous  rebellion  that  has  sacrificed  at  such  wick- 
ed altars?  Give  victory  to  our  banners.  Grant  that  this 
government  may  again  be  universally  established ;  and  this 
time  may  it  be  established  for  justice  and  for  liberty,  perpet- 
ually ;  and  let  the  light  of  our  example,  and  the  victory  with 
which  we  stritggle  against  mortal  lies  in  our  midst,  encour- 
age those  that  stand  in  darkness.  May  our  cleansed  liberties 
be  that  great  light  which  shall  shine  upon  them,  and  may 
they  cry  out  again  to  God,  and  take  heart,  and  vindicate 
their  manhood.  And  wilt  thou  one  by  one  emancipate  the 
nations,  and  fulfill  thy  jDromises  ?    We  ask  and  beseech  of 


282  The  Ministration  of  Suffering. 

thee,  O  God,  that  the  earth  may  be  gathered  in,  Jew  and  Gen- 
tile, that  knoAvledge  may  run  to  and  fro,  that  virtue  and  true 
piety  may  follow  it,  and  that  all  the  earth  may  see  thy  salva- 
tion. For  the  glory  and  honor  of  thy  heavenly  majesty  we 
crave  these  favors.  And  we  will  give  the  praise  to  the  Father, 
and  the  Son,  and  the  Holy  Spirit.     Amen. 


XIII. 

€^t  pMtsniUi  nf  €ntttl  33dief. 


Preached  in  PlymotUh  Church,  Brooklyn,  Sabbath  morning, 
October  6th,  1861. 


The  Necessity  of  Coerect  Belief. 


"But  continue  thou  in  the  things  which  thoa  hast  learned  and  hast  been  as- 
sured of,  knowing  of  whom  thou  hast  learned  them ;  and  that  from  a 
child  thou  hast  known  the  holy  Scriptures,  which  are  able  to  make  thee 
wise  unto  salvation  through  faith  which  is  in  Christ  Jesus.  All  ScrijDt- 
ure  is  given  by  inspiration  of  God,  and  is  profitable  for  doctrine,  for  re- 
proof, for  correction,  for  instruction  in  righteousness :  that  the  man  of 
God  may  be  perfect,  thoroughly  furnished  unto  aU  good  works." — 2 
Tim,,  iii.,  14-17. 

No  rebuke  could  be  more  pointed  than  that  which  this 
passage  affords  for  those  who  neglect  the  Scripture,  for  those 
who  deal  with  it  frivolously,  or  for  those  who  abuse  it,  mak- 
ing it  a  mere  magazine  of  texts  wherewith  to  carry  on  theo- 
logical war.  It  is  a  book  given  for  the  promotion  of  godli- 
ness of  life.  It  is  admirably  adapted  to  that  end,  and  to 
make  men  happy  hereafter,  as  well  as  good  here.  And  the 
apostle  blames,  by  implication,  on  the  one  side,  those  that 
neglect  its  truths  wholly,  and,  on  the  other  side,  those  that 
overzealously  employ  its  truths  for  the  promotion  of  some- 
thing else  than  godliness.  It  "  is  profitable  for  doctrine,  for 
reproof,  for  correction,  for  instruction  in  righteousness,  that" 
— this  is  the  final  end — "  that  the  man  of  God  may  be  per- 
fect, thoroughly  furnished  unto  all  good  works."  The  apostle 
here  shows  that  truth  is  important  as  means  to  an  end,  and 
that  this  end  is  godliness  of  life.  Truth  is  therefore  an  in- 
strument for  the  production  of  human  character. 

Comprehensively,  then,  we  may  say  that  there  are  two 
things  to  be  noticed  in  this  passage :  first,  that  the  proper 
use  and  end  of  all  religious  knowledge  is  the  promotion  of 
good  conduct  and  character ;  and,  secondly,  that  there  is  a 


286  The  Necessity  of  Correct  Belief. 

definite  and  important  relation  between  certain  truths  and 
certain  moral  results.  The  same  fruits  will  not  follow  as- 
well  from  one  set  of  principles  as  from  another.  Right  be- 
lief has  much  to  do  with  right  conduct. 

Believing  is  the  basis  of  all  instruction  and  education. 
Every  parent,  every  teacher,  every  moralist,  as  well  as  every 
preacher  of  righteousness,  holds  that  human  life  and  conduct 
will  largely  depend  upon  the  things  that  men  are  taught  to 
believe.  There  has  sprung  up  a  popular  notion  that  it  makes 
no  difierence  what  a  man  believes  concerning  religion  if  only 
he  be  sincere.  It  is  said  that  one  faith,  whether  it  be  Catlio- 
lic  or  Protestant,  Mohammedan  or  Christian,  is  as  good  as  an- 
other, so  that  it  be  sincerely  held.  Mere  conventional  moral- 
ity, without  any  real  religious  feeling  or  faith  of  any  kind,  is 
esteemed  as  good  as  spiritual  or  experimental  religion.  A 
prayerless,  godless,  worldly  man,  of  an  amiable  turn  of  mind, 
who  conforms  to  the  maxims  of  common  morality  existing 
in  the  community  about  him,  is  wont  to  say, "  I  have  no  great 
deal  of  religion,  and  I  do  not  trouble  myself  much  about  re- 
ligious doctrines ;  but  I  believe  in  doing  right,  and,  after  all, 
it  makes  but  little  difierence,  if  a  man  is  only  sincere,  what 
he  does  bcHeve." 

There  is  just  enough  truth  in  this  phrase,  in  some  of  its  ap- 
plications, to  make  it  plausible,  and  to  give  it  currency.  And 
so  it  has  come  to  be  a  proverb. 

Now  proverbs  are  the  colporteurs  of  philosophy.  They  do 
by  popular  truth  what  colporteurs  do  by  theology — they  go 
from  man  to  man,  from  house  to  house,  carrying  it  to  all  peo- 
ple. They  are  formulas  of  easy  use.  They  preach  a  great 
deal  more  than  sermons.  They  are  neither  so  long  nor  so 
heavy,  and  they  are  remembered  much  longer  and  much  more 
easily.  They  nestle  in  the  mind,  and  nimbly  come  to  our  ex- 
igencies. "Wlien  we  have  an  experience,  out  comes  a  proverb 
to  explain  or  direct  it.  Proverbs  are  ready  at  the  nick  of 
time  for  all  purposes  of  good  or  evil. 

If  a  proverb  is  true,  it  is  of  incalculable  service.     It  lives 


The  Necessity  of  Correct  Belief.  287 

through  generations.  It  needs  no  settlement,  no  stipend,  no 
pulpit.  It  goes  every  where,  preaching  to  every  body  for 
nothing.  But  if  a  proverb  is  bad,  it  is  equally  dangerous, 
just  as  enduring,  and  no  less  ubiquitous.  Thus  a  selfish 
thing,  shrewdly  exj)ressed,  will  cultivate  selfishness  for  cen- 
turies. A  bit  of  sinister  wisdom,  wittily  phrased,  will  inocu- 
late a  whole  nation  with  a  malignant  influence. 

These  proverbs — you  can  not  hunt  them  easily.  They  fire 
and  run.  They  are  every  where,  and  they  are  nowhere.  You 
turn  out  your  great  argument  to  hunt  a  proverb,  and  the 
pi'overb  is  gone  before  you  can  bring  your  argument  to  bear 
upon  it.  It  is  like  a  park  of  artillery  employed  upon  mus- 
quitoes. 

Nevertheless,  if  they  are  evil,  their  mischievousness  re- 
quires that  they  should  not  be  let  alone.  And  so,  now  and 
then,  a  proverb  which  touches  vital  and  distinctive  truth 
should  be  taken  up,  and,  like  a  venomous  insect,  be  pinned 
to  the  wall. 

When  it  is  said, "  It  matters  little  what  a  man's  creed  is  if 
his  life  be  right,"  if  is  meant, "  It  matters  little  what  a  man's 
head-knowledge  is,  so  that  he  is  sound  in  his  heart,"  and  by 
sincerity  is  intended,  not  sincerity  in  belief,  but  sincerity  in 
life  or  godliness,  a  great  truth  is  expressed — a  truth  that  is 
not  enough  recognized.  In  education,  it  is  of  great  imj)ort- 
ance  what^rt  of  truth  you  employ,  for  some  kinds  of  teach- 
ing are  a  great  deal  more  likely  to  produce .  godliness  than 
others.  But,  whatever  the  teachmg  has  been,  if  the  man  is  a 
good  man,  however  strange  it  may  apj^ear  that  such  a  creed 
should  have  such  a  disciple,  however  far  he  may  be  from  the 
average  results  which  ordinarily  follow  the  teaching  of  such 
things  as  he  believes,  his  godliness  is  to  be  acknowledged  in 
spite  of  the  beliefs.  If  a  man  lives  like  a  Christian,  you 
are  to  admit  that  he  is  one,  without  regard  to  the  Church  or 
creed  to  which  he  belongs.  In  other  words,  the  result  being 
gained,  of  goodness  and  godliness,  for  which  ends  truth  is 
given,  and  churches  are  established  that  is  to  be  conclusive. 


288  The  Necessity  of  Correct  Belief. 

And  no  man  lias  a  right  to  reject  a  true  Christian  man 
on  account  of  his  belief  or  his  disbelief.  When,  out  of  a 
heretical  sect,  or  out  of  a  sect  from  which  proceeds  many- 
evils  and  mischiefs,  there  come  men  of  true  Christian  lives 
and  dispositions,  they  must  be  accepted  as  Christians.  I  do 
not  say  that  the  principles  held  by  that  sect  are  innocuous, 
and  that  it  is  a  matter  of  indifference  whether  you  do  or  do 
not  preach  them.  It  makes  a  great  deal  of  difference  what 
you  preach.  These  men,  being  true  Christians,  are  not  expo- 
nents of  the  principles  under  which  they  have  been  educated. 
They  are  exceptions  to  the  ordinary  results  of  the  teaching 
of  those  principles.  Other  influences  have  been  at  work  in 
their  development.  They  do  not  fairly  represent  the  tenden- 
cy of  the  instructions  to  which  they  have  been  accustomed. 

There  are  thousands  that  are  not  half  as  good  as  they 
ought  to  be,  considering  the  things  that  they  believe.  A 
man's  creed  does  not  necessarily  make  him  good.  And  there 
are  thousands  that  are  better  than  their  creeds.  And  if  a 
man  is  bad,  you  are  to  reje.ct  him,  no  matter  how  good  his 
beliefs  may  be.  If  he  be  proved  a  good  man,  he  is  to  be 
accepted  joyfully,  by  whatever  strange  road  he  may  have 
traveled  to  his  goal  of  moral  excellence. 

But  generally  this  maxim  does  not  mean  sincerity  of  life 
in  the  form  of  godliness  ;  it  means  that  it  does  not  matter 
what  a  man  believes,  so  that  he  only  believes  it  sincerely. 

Now  there  are  mingled  with  religious  teachings  many 
things  which  have  no  direct  relation  to  godluiess,  and  about 
which  it  does  not  make  much  difference  what  a  man  be- 
lieves. There  are  some  men  who  think  that  a  minister 
ought  to  preach  in  certain  vestments.  Others  think  that 
it  makes  no  difference  what  vestments  he  preaches  in,  so 
that  he  preaches  well.  It  does  not  make  much  difference 
what  a  man  believes  about  these  things.  Some  believe 
much  and  some  little  in  ordinances ;  and  I  do  not  think  it 
makes  much  difference  what  a  man  believes  respecting  such 
matters.     There  are  various  things  that  have  no  relation  to 


The  Necessity  of  Corkect  Belief.  289 

life  and  duty,  about  which  it  does  not  make  much  difference 
what  a  man  believes.  "We  believe  in  the  Sabbath  day : 
many  Quakers  do  not.  We  believe  in  an  authoritative 
creed :  many  Quakers  do  not.  "We  believe  in  Church  or- 
ganizations: many  Quakers  do  not.  And  yet  there  are  no 
more  godly  men  than  are  to  be  found  among  the  Society  of 
Friends,  who  set  aside  Church  organizations,  and  creeds,  and 
days,  and  almost  all  the  external  framework  by  which  we 
administer  religion.  They  have  good  men,  and  I  trust  that 
we  have  good  men  also ;  showing  that  men  may  believe  either 
way  on  some  questions,  so  that  they  believe  honestly.  All 
art  has  its  science ;  all  religious  truth  has  its  philosophy ; 
and  in  respect  to  many  philosophies  of  truth,  it  may  be  said 
that  it  makes  no  immediate  difference  in  personal  piety  what 
view  a  man  takes  of  them. 

There  has  been  in  the  world  a  great  deal  of  persistence 
and  exactitude  in  the  statement  of  religious  truths  and  in 
the  observance  of  religious  ordinances,  and  these  things  have 
been  made  to  appear  to  be  much  more  than  they  really  were ; 
and  it  is  a  part  of  the  reaction  from  this  persistence  and  this 
exactitude  that  leads  men  to  say,  "A  man  may  be  a  church- 
man, and  yet  a  knave  ;  a  man  may  be  a  theologian,  and  yet 
a  bad  man ;  and  it  does  not  make  much  difference,  after  all, 
what  a  man  believes." 

We  see  thousands  of  men  sedulously  instructed  in  high 
doctrine,  and  made  scrupulous  and  exact  in  their  belief,  who 
yet,  in  all  matters  of  worldly  integrity,  fall  far  below  the  av- 
erage of  their  fellow-men ;  and,  on  the  other  hand,  we  see 
many  men  brought  up  loosely  as  respects  theological  truth, 
who  yet,  in  questions  of  truth  and  duty,  are  exact  and  scru- 
pulous. No  man  can  help  seeing  the  discrepancy,  and  it  is 
not  strange  that  the  conviction  should  be  ai-rived  at  by  many 
that  a  man's  belief  does  not  have  much  to  do  Avith  him. 

The  first  question,  then,  that  arises,  is  this :  Wliat  are  we 
to  understand  by  a  man's  belief?  Do  we  understand  by  it 
simply  those  things  of  which  he  has  an  intellectual  concep- 

n.— T 


290  The  Necessity  of  Correct  Belief. 

tion  ?  Do  they  amount  to  a  belief?  Truth  that  touches  a 
man  not  merely  through  a  cold  perception,  but  through  some 
warm  feeling — that  is  the  kind  of  truth  the  Scripture  teaches 
to  constitute  belief.  It  may  be  intellectually  conceived ;  but 
no  moral  truth  and  no  social  truth  is  ever  presented  so  as  to 
be  believed,  unless  it  be  presented  in  such  a  way  as  to  carry 
sympathy  and  feeling  with  it — and  that  is  not  the  case  with 
all  kinds  of  truth.  Physical  truths,  scientific  truths,  do  not 
touch  the  feelings,  and  do  not  need  to.  Arithmetic  deals 
with  truths  that  have  no  relation  directly  except  with  the 
understanding.  They  never  come  with  desire,  sorrow,  pity, 
or  emotion  of  any  sort.  But  all  truths  that  relate  to  dispo- 
sitions in  men,  to  moral  duties — they  never  stop  with  the 
understanding,  but  touch  the  feeling  as  well.  A  man  can 
not  be  said  to  believe  a.  moral  truth  unless  he  believes  it  so 
that  it  carries  some  emotion  with  it.  And,  in  this  respect,  it 
makes  a  great  difference  what  a  man  believes. 

Let  us,  then,  look  at  this  a  little  in  the  light  of  the  experi- 
ence of  men  in  this  world.  In  regard  to  the  truths  of  the 
physical  economy  of  the  globe,  does  it  make  any  difference 
what  a  man  believes?  Would  it  make  any  difference  to  a 
machinist  whether  he  thought  lead  was  as  good  for  tools  as 
steel?  Would  it  make  any  difference  to  a  man  in  respect  to 
the  industries  of  life  if  he  thought  that  a  triangle  was  as  good 
as  a  circular  wheel  in  machinery  ?  In  respect  to  the  quality 
of  substances,  the  forms  of  substances,  the  combination  of 
substances,  and  the  nature  of  motive  powers,  does  success  de- 
pend upon  sincere  believing  or  on  right  believing  ?  Suppose 
a  man  should  think  that  it  made  no  difference  what  he  be- 
lieved, and  should  say  to  himself,  "  I  wish  to  raise  corn,  but  I 
have  not  the  seed ;  so  I  will  take  some  ashes  and  plant  them ; 
and  I  believe  sincerely  that  they  are  as  good  as  corn" — would 
he  have  a  crop  of  corn  ?  What  would  his  sincerity  avail  ? 
The  more  sincere  he  was,  the  worse  it  would  be  for  him ;  for 
if  he  were  not  sincere,  he  might  slip  away  and  get  a  little 
corn,  and  plant  that.     In  all  material  thmgs,  the  more  sincere 


The  Necessity  of  Coerect  Belief.  291 

you  are,  if  you  are  right,  the  bette»;  l>ut  the  more  sincere 
you  are,  if  you  are  wrong,  the  worse.  In  the  latter  case,  sin- 
cerity is  the  mallet  that  drives  home  the  mischief. 

How  is  it  in  respect  to  commercial  matters  ?  Just  now  a 
great  many  are  manufacturing  articles  for  the  army.  Does 
it  make  no  diflerence  whether  a  man  thinks  that  cornstalks 
and  sticks  are  as  good  as  muskets  ?  Does  it  make  no  differ- 
ence whether  a  man  thinks  that  cotton  and  wool,  dust  and 
sweepings,  are  as  good  for  blankets  as  real  wool  ?  Does  it 
make  no  difference  with  the  sale  of  a  man's  goods  whether 
they  are  manufactured  of  one  material  or  another  ?  If  a  busi- 
ness man  believes  right  in  respect  to  his  business,  he  pros- 
pers ;  and  if  he  believes  wrong,  he  does  not  prosper. 

How  is  it  in  respect  to  navigation  ?  Does  any  man  say, "  I 
have  my  own  theories  about  astronomy,  and  I  will  sail  my  ship 
accordmg  to  them  ?  I  do  not  believe  the  talk  of  the  books 
on  this  subject ;  and  it  does  not  make  much  difference  what 
a  man  believes  respecting  it."  Does  it  make  no  difference 
what  a  man  believes  about  charts  ?  Suppose  the  shipmaster 
should  say, "  I  know  the  chart  says  that  here  are  three  fath- 
oms of  water,  that  here  are  two,  and  that  here  is  one,  but  I 
do  not  believe  it ;  I  know  that  my  ship  draws  sixteen  feet  of 
water,  but  I  believe  that  I  can  run  it  over  a  twelve-feet  bar" 
— does  it  make  no  difference  what  he  believes  ?  It  makes  all 
the  difference  between  shipwreck  and  safety. 

Throughout  the  whole  realm  of  physical  truth,  a  man  is 
bound  to  believe,  not  only  sincerely,  but  correctly.  In  busi- 
ness, in  manufacturing,  in  navigation,  in  all  things  that  relate 
to  the  conduct  of  men  in  secular  affairs,  men  must  be  right 
— not  merely  sincere. 

Take  one  thing  farther.  There  are  affectional  and  social 
truths.  Does  it  make  no  difference  what  a  man  believes 
in  respect  to  these  ?  Is  there  no  difference  between  pride, 
vanity,  and  selfishness  on  the  one  hand,  and  tenderness,  sym- 
pathy, and  love  on  the  other?  If  a  man  has  social  inter- 
course, does  it  make  no  difference  what  view  he  takes  of 


292  The  Necessity  of  Correct  Belief. 

these  things  ?  Will  it  make  no  difference  with  his  conduct 
if  he  thinks  that  pride  and  love  are  about  the  same  thing, 
and  that  one  is  a  proper  substitute  for  the  other  ?  His  sin- 
cerity makes  the  mischief  worse,  in  such  a  case. 

It  is  only  when  we  come  to  moral  grounds  that  men  begin 
to  urge  this  maxim  with  any  considerable  degree  of  confi- 
dence. They  reject  it  in  its  application  to  material  truths, 
to  physical  sciences,  to  business,  to  social  intercourse  in  life, 
and  hold  to  the  necessity  of  correct  belief  It  is  not  until 
they  come  to  religious  truths  that  men  begin  to  say, "  It  does 
not  make  much  difference  what  a  man  believes." 

Let  us  take  the  lower  forms  of  moral  truth,  and  see  if  it 
is  so  in  our  daily  intercourse.  You  go  to  church,  and  hear 
your  minister  preach  about  the  necessity  of  believing  certain 
great  doctrines,  and  on  your  way  home  you  say,  "It  is  not 
of  so  much  importance  what  a  man  believes,  if  he  is  only  sin- 
cere in  it."  When  you  get  homo,  you  find  that  there  is  an 
altercation  between  the  boy  and  the  nurse.  There  is  a  lie 
between  them  somewhere.  And  the  child  falls  back  on  your 
theory,  and  says,  in  respect  to  the  wrongfulness  of  lying, 
"  Father,  I  do  not  think  it  makes  much  difference  what  one 
believes,  if  he  is  only  sincere."  What  do  you  think  about 
this  theory  now  ? 

You  are  bringing  up  your  children.  You  can  bring  them 
up  to  believe  m  truth  and  honesty,  or  otherwise.  Do  you 
not  desire  to  bring  them  up  to  believe  that  honesty  is  the 
best  policy  ?  Do  you  not  desire  to  bring  them  up  to  believe 
that  purity  stands  connected  with  their  prosperity  in  after 
life  ?  Do  you  not  feel  the  greatest  solicitude  about  the  teach- 
ing of  their  miuds  ?  Are  you  not  determined  that  they  shall 
be  brought  up  to  distinguish  between  truth  and  lies,  honor 
and  dishonor,  purity  and  impurity,  nobleness  and  vulgarity  ? 
How  particular  you  are  when  it  is  moral  truth  applied  to  the 
rearing  of  your  children !  How  long  would  you  keep  a 
schoolmaster  or  a  schoolmistress  in  a  common  school  or  an 
academy  who  held,  in  respect  to  these  subjects,  as  you  hold 


The  Necessity  of  Correct  Belief.         293 

in  respect  to  religious  matters,  that  it  does  not  make  any  dif- 
ference what  a  person  believes  ? 

As  it  is  with  the  lower  forms  of  moral  truth,  so  expe- 
rience teaches  us  it  is  with  the  higher  forms  of  moral  truth. 
There  is  a  definite  and  heaven-appointed  connection  between 
the  things  a  man  holds  to  be  true,  and  the  results  that  follow 
in  that  man's  mind. 

All  truths  are  not  indeed  alike  important,  and  all  truths 
do  not  show  the  efiects  of  being  believed  or  rejected  with 
equal  rapidity.  There  are  many  truths  which  bear  such  a 
relation  to  our  every-day  life,  that  the  fruit  of  believing  or 
rejecting  appears  almost  at  once.  These  are  spring  truths, 
that  come  up  and  bear  fruit  early  in  the  season.  There  are 
other  truths  that  require  time  for  working  out  their  results. 
They  are  summer  trviths,  and  the  fruit  of  belief  or  disbelief 
does  not  ripen  till  July  or  August.  Other  truths,  in  respect 
to  showing  the  results  of  belief  or  disbelief,  are  like  late  au- 
tumnal fruits,  that  require  the  whole  winter  to  develop  their 
proper  juices.  But  in  these  last  the  connection  is  just  as  cer- 
tain, although  it  is  longer  in  making  itself  appear,  as  in  the 
first,  where  the  distance  between  cause  and  efiect  is  shortest, 
and  the  development  is  most  raj^id. 

Thus  it  is  a  matter  of  great  importance  whether  a  man 
believes  in  his  obligation  to  God  or  not;  whether  he  be- 
lieves that  he  is  sinful  or  not;  whether  he  believes  in  the 
necessity  of  the  influence  of  the  Spirit  in  regeneration.  A 
man's  belief  in  respect  to  all  of  these  is  very  important,  but 
his  belief  in  respect  to  some  of  them  is  more  important  than 
it  is  in  respect  to  others.  In  respect  to  some  of  them  it 
shows  its  results  immediately,  and  in  respect  to  others  re- 
motely. But  there  is  no  way  of  holding  any  great  religious 
truth  that  does  not,  first  or  last,  work  out  a  result  answer- 
ing exactly  to  the  nature  of  the  thmg  believed. 

A  man's  belief  is  not  the  only  thing  that  works  upon  him. 
There  is  a  great  mistake  in  saying  that  as  a  man  believes  so 
is  he,  if  you  mean  that  his  character  depends  upon  his  belief 


294  The  Necessity  of  Correct  Belief. 

in  any  technical  theological  truth.  "What  a  man  is  depends 
in  a  great  measure  ifpon  his  father  and  mother,  and  brothers 
and  sisters,  and  friends ;  that  is,  it  depends  partly  on  the 
things  that  he  believes,  and  partly  upon  the  influences  that 
are  working  upon  him  in  the  family,  in  the  society,  and  in  the 
party  to  which  he  belongs.  There  are  a  thousand  and  one 
circumstances  that  have  much  to  do  with  what  a  man  is ; 
and  his  character  is  not  formed  alone  by  his  technical  beliefs. 

Let  us  apply  the  foregoing  reasonings  and  explanations  to 
the  more  important  truths  which  we  are  appointed  to  preach. 

"We  preach,  then,  that  this  life  is  a  very  transient  scene ; 
that  we  are  strangers  and  pilgrims  here ;  that  we  are  started 
here  to  be  transplanted ;  that  we  are  undergoing  a  process  of 
education  in  this  life  with  reference  to  a  life  to  come.  The 
prime  truth  which  we  preach  is  the  transitoriness  of  the  life 
that  now  is,  and  the  permanence  of  the  future  life ;  and  it  is 
of  supreme  importance  what  a  man  believes  in  regard  to  that 
truth.  If  a  man  says,  either  practically  or  theoretically, "  My 
existence  in  this  world  is  all  my  life ;"  if  he  ignores  the  other 
life,  and  says,  "I  shall  live  just  as  long  as  I  live  here,  and  no 
longer,"  his  character  and  conduct  will  be  very  different  from 
what  they  would  be  if  he  believed  in  a  life  beyond  the  grave. 
A  man  that  has  no  belief  in  the  future  will  study  how  to  ex- 
tract the  most  happiness  from  this  life.  He  who  believes  that 
his  life  will  not  extend  beyond  sixty  or  seventy  years,  can 
never  have  such  inspirations  and  heroisms  as  he  experiences 
who  believes  that  he  shall  live  as  long  as  God  Almighty 
lives — forever  and  forever. 

"We  declare,  next,  that  in  this  life  men  live  imperfect  and 
sinful  lives,  and  do  much  that  is  wrong  by  voluntary  trans- 
gression, as  well  as  from  the  infirmities  which  come  from 
crudeness  and  ignorance.  Does  it  make  no  difference  wheth- 
er a  man  believes  he  is  sinful  or  not  ?  If  a  man  is  sick,  does 
it  make  no  difference  whether  he  knows  it  or  not  ?  If  a  man 
has  a  disease  working  in  his  system,  does  it  make  no  differ- 
ence whether  he  understands  it,  and  acts  accordingly,  or  not  ? 


The  Necessity  of  Correct  Belief.  295 

If  a  man's  soul  is  diseased,  does  it  make  no  difference  wlietli- 
er  he  believes  that  or  not  ? 

We  are  taught  in  the  Word  of  God  that  all  men  are  sin- 
struck,  and  that  every  man  that  lives  needs  the  grace,  and 
forbearance,  and  forgiveness  of  God,  and  moral  renovation  at 
the  hands  of  God.  If  a  man  believes  that  he  is  good  enough, 
of  course  he  becomes  listless,  and  heedless,  and  inattentive. 
If  another  man  by  his  side  believes  that  he  is  sinful,  and  needs 
to  be  born  again,  with  what  a  constantly  quickened  and 
Avatchful  conscience  must  he  needs  live !  and  how,  with  all 
his  moral  power,  must  he  perpetually  strive  to  live  a  godly 
life !  Some  men  believe  that,  though  we  ought  to  become 
good,  goodness  is  exclusively  the  creature  of  our  own  voli- 
tion ;  that  all  men  have  a  spark  of  goodness  in  them,  and 
need  but  to  kindle  that  to  a  flame,  in  order  to  be  pervaded 
by  goodness ;  that  we  are  all  good  in  a  small  measure,  and 
that,  to  become  very  good,  we  have  only  to  cultivate  the 
goodness  we  have.  But  the  Scripture  teaches  us  that  the 
beginnings  of  our  spiritual  life  must  be  founded  in  the  power 
of  God — that  they  must  be  increased  by  communication  of 
our  heart  with  the  heart  of  God.  Here  are  two  radically 
opposite  views.  Does  it  make  no  difference  which  a  man 
takes  ?  One  leads  to  morality  of  a  lower  kind,  and  the  other 
to  religious  emotions  and  a  religious  life.  They  diverge,  and 
go  in  opposite  directions.  It  is  not  my  business  to  show 
which  is  best,  but  to  show  that  one  goes  one  way  and  the 
other  another. 

Does  it  make  no  difference  what  a  man  believes  in  respect 
to  the  character  of  God,  the  nature  of  the  divine  government 
in  this  world,  its  claims  upon  us,  and  our  obligations  under 
it  ?  If  a  man  believes  that  God  sits  above,  indifferent  to  the 
affairs  of  this  life,  and  too  quiescent  to  attend  to  the  little 
disturbances  of  sin,  and  that  he  overlooks  transgression,  that 
man  must  inevitably  come  to  a  state  of  moral  indifference. 
But  if  a  man  believes  that  God  can  not  possibly  look  upon 
sin  with  allowance,  that  he  abhors  iniquity,  and  that,  unless 


296  The  Necessity  of  Correct  Belief. 

we  turn  from  our  wicked  ways,  he  will  lay  his  hand  on  his 
sword,  and  set  himself  forth  as  the  maintainer  of  law,  and 
justice,  and  integrity,  that  man  can  not  help  being  morally 
solicitous.  Does  it  make  no  difference  what  a  man  believes 
on  these  subjects  ? 

Go  into  New  York,  and  in  the  Sixth  Ward  you  shall  find 
two  representative  men.  One  says, "  I  voted  for  the  judge, 
and  helped  put  him  where  he  is,  and  he  will  wink  at  my 
crimes.  I  can  drink  as  much  as  I  please,  on  Sundays  and  on 
week-days,  and  he  will  not  disturb  me.  He  is  easy  and  good- 
natured,  and  he  is  not  going  to  be  hard  with  me  if  I  do 
break  the  laws  a  little,"  And  the  man,  because  he  believes 
that  the  judge  does  not  care  for  his  wickedness,  and  will  not 
punish  him,  grows  bold  and  corrupt  in  transgression.  But 
at  length  he  is  arraigned,  he  is  broughf  before  the  court,  and 
he  finds  there,  instead  of  his  bribed  judge,  a  white-faced  man 
— not  red-faced ;  one  of  those  men  with  a  long  head  upward 
— not  backward  and  downward ;  a  man  with  a  full  sense  of 
the  value  of  justice  and  truth.  The  culprit  begins  his  shuf- 
fling excuses.  The  judge  listens  to  none  of  them ;  he  reads 
the  law,  and  says,  "  Your  conduct  is  herein  condemned,"  and 
sends  him  away  to  receive  his  just  deserts.  When  the  man 
has  expiated  his  crime,  he  goes  around  in  the  same  Avard,  and 
says,  "You  must  walk  straight  hereafter.  The  judge  that 
sits  on  the  bench  now  is  not  the  jolly  old  judge  that  used  to 
sit  there.  If  you  go  before  him,  he  will  make  you  smart." 
Does  it  not  make  a  difference  what  a  man  believes  about  a 
judge  ?  If  he  believes  that  he  is  a  lenient,  conniving  judge, 
does  it  not  make  him  careless  ?  and  if  he  believes  that  he  is 
a  straightforward,  just  judge,  does  it  not  make  him  afraid  of 
transgression  ? 

Now  lift  v.])  the  judge's  bench,  and  make  it  the  judgment 
seat ;  and  take  out  the  human  judge,  and  put  God  Almighty 
there.  If  men  believe  him  to  be  an  all-smiling  God — a  God 
that  is  all  sunshine ;  an  all-sympathizing  God — a  God  that  is 
nothing  but  kindness,  and  goodness,  and  gentleness,  they  say 


The  Necessity  of  Correct  Belief.  297 

to  themselves,  "  We  will  do  as  we  have  a  mind  to."  Take 
away  that  miserable  slander  upon  the  revealed  character  of 
God,  and  lift  up  the  august  front  of  Justice,  on  whose  brow 
love  proudly  sits,  and  let  men  see  that  there  is  a  vast  Heart 
of  love  and  gentleness  indeed,  but  one  that  will  by  no  means 
clear  the  guilty,  and  they  will  take  more  heed  to  their  con- 
duct. Does  it,  then,  make  no  difference  what  a  man  believes 
about  God's  nature,  and  his  manner  of  dealing  with  men  ? 
It  makes  all  the  difference  between  laxity  and  earnestness ; 
between  an  endeavor  to  live  truly  and  no  endeavor  at  all  in 
that  direction ;  between  right  and  wrong  conduct. 

What,  then,  is  the  application,  finally,  of  this  ?  Why,  my 
Christian  friends,  it  is  just  this :  that,  according  to  the  tenor 
of  the  passage  from  which  our  text  is  taken,  it  makes  all  the 
difference  in  the  world  what  you  believe  in  respect  to  those 
truths  that  are  connected  with  godliness — with  purity  of 
thought,  purity  of  motive,  purity  of  disposition.  You  must 
believe  right  about  them.  About  those  truths  that  are  re- 
lated to  the  ordinances  of  the  Church ;  to  the  framework  of 
the  Church ;  to  the  question  as  to  whether  the  ministry  are 
successors  of  the  apostles,  or  whether  each  one  receives  his 
commission  direct  from  the  Spirit  of  God  in  his  heart — about 
those  truths  you  may  believe  either  way.  You  may  believe 
that  the  Episcopal,  the  Methodist,  the  Baptist,  the  Congrega- 
tional, or  the  Presbyterian  Church  is  the  true  Church  ;  you 
may  believe  that  the  Sabbath  should  be  observed  in  this  or 
in  that  way — you  may  believe  any  of  these  things,  and  be  a 
good  man.  But  with  reference  to  the  truths  that  are  re- 
lated to  the  character  of  man  as  a  sinner  having  need  of  a 
spiritual  change ;  with  reference  to  the  truths  that  stand  re- 
lated to  man's  responsibility  to  God,  and  to  the  government 
of  God ;  with  reference  to  the  truths  that  relate  to  your  im- 
mortality—  with  reference  to  all  these  great  vital,  experi- 
mental truths  of  the  Bible,  if  you  believe  at  all,  you  must  be- 
lieve right,  or  woe  be  upon  you  !  There  is  a  right  way  and 
a  wrong  way  of  believing  in  respect  to  them.    The  wrong 


298  The  Necessity  of  Correct  Belief. 

way  leads  to  disaster,  and  the  right  way  to  benefit.  Al- 
though with  regard  to  ordinances,  and  creed-forms,  and  usa- 
ges, it  does  not  matter  much  how  a  man  believes,  yet  with  re- 
gard to  those  truths  that  relate  to  his  immortal  well-being  it 
is  very  important  how  he  believes. 

If  there  are  any  truths  to  be  indifferent  about,  they  are 
those  that  relate  to  your  worldly  good;  and  if  there  are  any 
truths  that  you  can  not  afford  to  be  indifferent  about,  they 
are  those  that  relate  to  your  character,  to  your  immortality, 
and  to  the  eternity  that  awaits  you.  Lideed,  your  character 
and  destiny  dejjend  upon  your  beliefs  in  truth. 

If,  then,  any  of  you  have  hitherto  been  reading  the  "Word 
of  God  as  a  book  of  curiosity,  I  beseech  you  remember  that 
it  is  not  made  knowoi  to  you  for  the  purpose  of  curiosity. 
It  is  made  known  to  you  to  be  your  guide  from  sin,  from  sor- 
row, from  earthly  trouble,  toward  immortality  and  toward 
glory.  "  All  Scrij^ture  is  given  by  inspiration  of  God,  and  is 
profitable  for  doctrine,  for  reproof,  for  correction,  for  instruc- 
tion in  righteousness ;  that  the  man  of  God  may  be  perfect, 
thoroughly  furnished  unto  all  good  works." 

Ah  !  the  way  a  man  reads  the  Bible — how  much  that  de- 
pends upon  his  necessity.  I  have  unrolled  the  chart  of  the 
coast  many  and  many  a  time,  particularly  in  these  later  days, 
since  there  has  been  so  much  interest  attached  to  it.  I  have 
gone  along  down  with  my  finger,  and  followed  the  shoals  and 
depths  in  and  out  of  this  harbor  and  that,  and  imagined  a 
light-house  here,  and  a  light-house  there,  that  were  marked  on 
the  chart,  and  have  looked  at  the  inland  country  lining  the 
shore,  and  it  has  been  a  matter  of  interest  to  me,  to  be  siire. 
But  suppose  I  had  been  in  that  equinoctial  gale  that  blew 
with  such  violence,  and  had  had  the  command  of  a  ship  off 
the  coast  of  Cape  Hatteras,  and  the  light-house  had  not  been 
in  sight,  and  my  spars  had  been  split,  and  my  rigging  had 
been  disarranged,  and  my  sails  had  been  blown  away,  and  I 
had  had  all  I  could  do  to  keep  the  ship  out  of  a  trough  of  the 
sea,  and  I  had  been  trying  to  make  some  harbor,  how  would 


The  Necessity  of  Coerect  Belief.  299 

I  have  unrolled  the  chart,  and  with  two  men  to  help  me  hold 
it,  on  account  of  the  reeling  and  staggering  of  the  vessel,  look- 
ed at  all  the  signs,  and  endeavored  to  find  out  where  I  was  ! 

Now  when  I  sit  in  my  house,  where  there  is  no  gale,  and 
with  no  ship,  and  read  my  chart  out  of  curiosity,  I  read  it  as 
you  sometimes  read  your  Bible.  You  say, "  Here  is  the  head- 
land of  depravity ;  and  there  is  a  light-house — bom  again ; 
and  here  is  the  channel  of  duty."  And  yet  every  one  of  you 
has  charge  of  a  ship — the  human  soul.  Evil  passions  are 
fierce  winds  that  are  driving  it.  This  Bible  is  God's  chart 
for  you  to  steer  by,  to  keep  you  from  the  bottom  of  the  sea, 
and  to  show  you  where  the  harbor  is,  and  how  to  reach  it 
without  running  on  rocks  or  bars. 

If  you  have  been  reading  this  book  to  gratify  curiosity ;  if 
you  have  been  reading  it  to  see  if  you  could  not  catch  a  Uni- 
versalist ;  if  you  have  been  reading  it  to  find  a  knife  with 
which  to  cut  up  a  Unitarian ;  if  you  have  been  reading  it 
for  the  purpose  of  setting  up  or  taking  down  a  bishop ;  if 
you  have  been  reading  it  to  establish  or  overthrow  any  sect 
— if  you  have  been  reading  it  so,  then  stop.  It  is  God's  med- 
icine-book. You  are  sick.  You  are  mortally  struck  through 
with  disease.  There  is  no  human  remedy  for  your  trouble. 
But  here  is  God's  medicine-book.  If  you  read  it  for  life,  for 
health,  for  growth  in  righteousness,  then  blessed  is  your  read- 
ing ;  but  if  you  read  it  for  disputation  and  dialectical  ingenu- 
ities, it  is  no  more  to  you  than  Bacon's  "  Novum  Organum" 
would  be. 

It  is  the  book  of  life ;  it  is  the  book  of  everlasting  life ;  so 
take  heed  how  you  read  it.  In  reading  it,  see  that  you  have 
the  truth,  and  not  the  mere  semblance  of  it.  You  can  not 
live  without  it.  You  die  forever  unless  you  have  it  to  teach 
you  what  are  your  relations  to  God  and  eternity.  May  God 
guide  you  away  from  all  cunning  appearances  of  truth  set  to 
deceive  men,  and  make  you  love  the  real  truth !  Above  all 
other  things,  may  God  make  you  honest  in  interpreting  it, 
and  applying  it  to  your  daily  life  and  disposition  ! 


XIV. 


Cliristittniti]  a  Dital  ^un. 


Preached  in  Plymouth  Church.,  Brooklyn,  Sabbath  mornings 
March  zzd,  1868. 


Cheistianity   a  Vital   Foece. 


"It  is  the  Spirit  that  quickeneth ;  the  flesh  profiteth  nothing:  the  words 
that  I  speak  unto  you,  they  are  spirit  and  they  are  life." — John,  vi.,  63. 

Not  that  which  man  can  state  is  Christianity:  that  which 
men  live  under  certain  conditions  of  inspiration — that  is  Chris- 
tianity. It  is  the  living  form  which  truth  takes,  not  the  fonn 
which  truth  takes  in  a  merely  speculative  statement.  Chris- 
tianity is  a  living  power.  It  has  poetry  in  it,  but  Christianity 
is  not  a  poem.  It  has  the  element  of  reasoning  in  it,  yet 
Christianity  is  not  a  philosoiDhy.  If  you  should  gather  up  all 
the  truths  in  Christianity  and  give  them  appropriate  state- 
ment, it  would  not  become  a  system  of  theology,  or,  if  it  be- 
came a  system  of  theology,  it  would  no  longer  be  Christianity. 

A  system  of  philosophy  which  includes  in  it  every  thing 
which  belongs  to  Christ  and  to  a  Christian  life  may  and  does 
have  its  uses,  but,  after  all,  it  is  not  a  living  power;  and 
Christ  said  that  his  religion  was,  that  what  he  taught  was 
not  too?Y?-forms,  which  were  just  heard  in  the  ear — it  was 
that  which  sprang  up  in  the  mind  by  the  power  of  the  Holy 
Ghost,  in  consequence  of  such  teaching ;  it  was  a  living 
thing  in  man,  as  it  was  a  living  thing  in  himself  In  other 
words,  there  is  a  subtle  life-power,  and  it  is  this  life-power  that 
is  the  true  Christianity.  What  is  a  plant,  though  it  be  per- 
fect in  all  points,  in  form  and  color,  if  it  have  not  in  it  that 
mysterious  princij)le  which  philosophers  call  the  vital  element  ? 
It  is  then  no  longer  a  plant.  The  dried  plants  of  a  herbarium 
may  be  souvenirs,  but  they  are  not  living  j^lants ;  the  life  has 
gone  out.     And  so  also  it  is  with  this  human  body  when  the 


304  Christianity  a  Vital  Force. 

vital  power  ceases ;  when  one  has  just  died  by  accident,  and 
not  one  element-  is  lost  of  outward  life  or  form.  There  is 
every  organ ;  every  member ;  every  fibre ;  every  drop  of 
blood — and  yet  the  body  is  not  a  man.  "What  was  it  that 
made  it  a  man  ?    It  was  the  lif e-iorce. 

It  is  not  my  arm,  or  my  foot,  or  my  head,  or  my  blood,  or 
all  of  them  together,  that  makes  me  a  man ;  it  is  something 
which  is  using  all  these  things,  and  which  we  call  the  vital 
principle.  It  is  that  that  makes  the  man ;  and  all  these  other 
things  together,  without  this  vital  force,  amount  to  nothing, 
else  a  cunningly  carved  statue  would  be  a  man.  Nature  is 
not  simply  that  vast  round  of  things  which  we  see.  There  is 
a  life-force  (or,  as  philosophers  in  our  day  are  pleased  to  call 
it,  "force,"  which  is  apparently  the  only  God  of  philosophy), 
without  which  the  whole  framework  is  dead  as  a  picture. 
Out  of  that  life-force  of  which  we  constitute  the  living  organ- 
ism in  the  individual  comes  comprehensively  the  system  of 
the  world.  It  is  precisely  in  analogy  with  this  that  Chris- 
tianity is  to  the  nature  of  man  a  divine  force,  spiritualizing 
him.  It  is  not  the  doctrine  which  is  employed,  or  the  instru- 
ment ;  it  is  not  the  illustrations  which  are  employed,  or  the 
reasonings  which  may  be  deduced,  that  give  to  Christianity  its 
potency.  It  is  that  something  else  besides,  over  and  above 
all  these  interior  and  these  external  elements.  These  are 
what  Christ  called  the  flesh,  and  he  says  that,  in  and  of  them- 
selves, they  profit  nothing.  "The  words  that  I  speak  unto  you, 
they  are  spirit  and  they  are  life."  This  is  Paul's  meanmg 
when  he  contrasts  his  method  of  teachmg  with  that  which 
prevailed  among  the  Greeks.  Theirs  was  external,  his  inter- 
nal. Theirs  was  merely  human  influence.  He  recognized 
this  internal  agency  in  terms  as  well  as  in  general  statement. 
I  did  not  depend,  he  says,  upon  wisdom,  or  upon  polished  ex- 
terior, or  admirable  adaptation  of  means  to  the  end.  He  un- 
dertook to  produce  efiects  by  no  such  methods  as  belonged 
to  the  ordinary  schools  of  men.  I  determined  to  know  noth- 
ing but  Christ,  and  I  determined  not  to  know  him  except  in 


Cheistianity  a  Yital  Force.  805 

this  Tvay — crucified — that  you  might  be  strong  in  all  the  pow- 
er of  God,  in  the  power  of  the  soul.  There  was  an  interior 
something  that  he  was  feeling  after  and  expounding.  In  the 
next  place,  he  declares  the  Gospel  explicitly  to  be — what  ?  a 
history  of  the  life,  sufferings,  death,  resurrection,  and  ascension 
of  the  Lord  Jesus  Christ  ?  Nay !  For  although  all  these 
things  are  in  the  Gospel  history,  he  declares  that  the  essence 
of  that  Gospel  was  the  wisdom  of  God,  and  the  power  of  God 
unto  salvation.  There  is  in  the  Gospel  a  divine  meaning,  act- 
ing through  its  teachings  upon  the  human  soul  in  such  a  way 
as  to  transform  it  from  a  lower  to  a  higher  sphere ;  and  that 
process  by  which  man  is  thus  transformed  and  changed — that 
is  Christianity.  It  is  a  vital  force ;  and  a  vital  force  not  ab- 
stractly considered,  but  operating  upon  the  human  soul. 

It  may  be  stated,  then,  generally,  that  Christianity  is  a  la- 
tent si^iritual  power,  designed  and  adapted  to  translate  man 
from  a  lower  and  physical  life  into  a  higher  and  spiritual  life. 
That  is  Christianity. 

Let  us,  then,  consider  farther, 

First.  If  this  be  Christianity,  what  is  a  .Christian  life  ? 

Second.  Some  good  reasons  why  men  should  enter  ujDon 
such  a  life. 

Wliat,  then,  in  the  first  place,  is  a  Christian  life  ?  It  is  the 
life  of  the  human  soul,  derived  not  alone  from  natural  laws — 
not  alone  from  the  incitements  of  society — procured  not  by 
human  causes,  but  distinctively  and  peculiarly  a  life  which  is 
derived  from  God.  It  is  a  life  which  results  from  the  union 
of  our  mind  with  the  divine  mind.  It  is  distinctively  peculiar 
in  this,  that  it  is  not  an  occasional  excitement  and  orgasm ; 
it  is  not  the  access,  as  the  ancients  believe,  of  a  divine  spirit 
once  in  a  while,  but  it  is  the  mdwelling  of  the  divine  influence 
in  the  human  soul  in  such  a  way  as  that  man  has  an  incite- 
ment and  an  inspiration  higher  than  any  that  can  come  from 
natural  and  material  causes.  It  begins  in  this  fact  (this  is 
the  vital  fact — it  is  the  key-note  of  the  whole  theme),  that 
there  is  a  divine  power  which  lapses  into  the  human  soul,  and 

II.— U 


806  Christianity  a  Vital  Force. 

that  by  that  divine  power  all  the  faculties  of  a  man  become 
competent  to  do  "or  to  be  what  they  can  not  do  or  be  when 
they  are  left  to  the  laws  of  nature  or  to  the  laws  of  society. 

You  may  call  this  miraculous ;  I  do  not.  It  is  only  the 
development  of  a  higher  element  in  nature.  You  may  call 
this  supernatural ;  I  do  not  think  it  is  supernatural.  The 
action  of  the  divine  mind  upon  the  human  mind  is  as  much 
in  the  course  of  nature  as  the  construction  of  the  human  soul 
itself  Under  such  influence  is  developed  a  peisonal  experi- 
ence, difiering  from  any  that  could  have  beein  otherwise  de- 
veloped—  a  personal  experience  which  awakens  in  us  and 
finally  perfects  a  character  like  that  of  Christ ;  which  edu- 
cates our  nature  and  our  habits  into  a  likeness  to  Christ's 
nature  and  habits  ;  and  I  think  these  may  be  stated  in  three 
words — Purity,  Love,  Activity. 

Purity — including  all  that  is  meant  by  righteousness,  up- 
rightness, integrity,  truth,  justice,  fidelity. 

Love — developing  all  that  is  taught  by  God,  by  Christ, 
and  by  the  Holy  Spirit,  of  benignity,  of  pity,  of  sympathy,  of 
mercy. 

Activity — the  inevitable  employment  of  all  this  resurrec- 
tion power  in  the  soul,  as  a  force,  upon  other  men,  and  upon 
the  world  itself. 

As  Christ  was  pure,  loving,  and  energetic,  so  every  one 
that  becomes  a  disciple  of  Christ  has  excited  in  him  a  tend- 
ency toward  universal  purity,  universal  love,  and  universal 
activity.  This  life  not  only  begins  by  divine  influence,  but 
continues  and  develops  itself  all  the  way  through  by  com- 
munion with  God,  as  its  indispensable  cause.  It  is  not 
a  work  that  is  completed  and  then  left ;  that  which  began 
must  continue.  Therefore  Christ  is  called  the  "  author  and 
the  finisher  of  our  faith."  He  that  awakens  in  us  this  new 
tendency,  this  spiritual  tendency,  broods  upon  the  soul — that 
is,  constantly  nourishes  it  and  stimulates  it  day  by  day,  and 
develops  it  into  the  perfect  character  of  a  man  in  Christ  Je- 
sus.   These  are,  then,  the  original  elements  of  a  Christian 


Christianity  a  Vital  Force.  807 

life;  the  power  of  God  working  in  the  human  soul.  Un- 
der that  power,  the  development  of  the  soul  into  purity,  love, 
and  activity  is  natural,  as  is  also  the  continuity  of  life  under 
such  a  disclosure  and  development,  by  the  constant  presence 
and  influence  of  the  Spirit  of  God. 

Let  us,  secondly^  look  at  some  of  the  reasons  why  one 
should  enter  upon  such  a  life  as  this,  and  why  this  should  be 
our  scheme  of  life  and  model  of  character. 

No  one  in  our  intelligent  community,  I  suppose,  ever  passes 
to  years  of  maturity  without  having  had,  either  practically 
or  theoretically,  some  conception  of  a  character.  Some  men 
project  their  character  into  a  material  form.  Their  only  idea 
of  character  is  what  they  will  get,  or  what  they  will  have  in 
their  external  condition.  With  some,  the  conception  of  char- 
acter is  to  own  a  hundred  ships,  and  to  get  a  revenue  from 
every  one  of  them ;  to  be  the  owner  of  more  acres  of  land 
than  any  other  man  in  all  the  state.  Another  man's  idea  of 
character  consists  in  the  holding  of  such  an  amount  of  wealth, 
of  bonds,  of  mortgages,  of  evidences  of  debt,  and  what  not, 
that  they  shall  make  him  a  fiscal  j)rince.  Such  men  have  a 
certain  conception  of  character,  and  it  expresses  itself  by  out- 
ward forms,  by  materialization.  In  youth,  some  generous  na- 
tures develop  a  character  largely  ideal.  They  live,  or  dream, 
of  what  they  shall  be — of  what  they  shall  achieve,  perchance, 
in  scholarship.  They  paint  pictures  of  fancy ;  but  their  ide- 
al achievements  are  only  in  one  direction,  and  are  to  be  at- 
tained only  through  the  intellectual  forces.  Other  men  im- 
agine themselves  artists ;  and  the  sun  paints  not  so  many 
pictures  in  the  livelong  year  as  they  paint  in  their  imagina- 
tion. Their  conception  of  character  is  comparatively  only  in 
the  aesthetic  direction.  Other  men  purpose  to  be  speakers ; 
and  they  sway  (in  fancy)  tumultuous  assemblies ;  and  they 
hear  themselves  (as  nobody  else  shall  hear  them)  pouring- 
tides  of  eloquence  upon  listening  ears.  They  dream  these 
things;  we  call  them  "air-castles."  There  is  still  another 
conception — of  home-life,  of  a  love,  of  a  lover,  a  companion, 


308  Christianity  a  Vital  Force. 

of  joy  and  blossoming  in  the  household — of  a  palace  of  de- 
light. But  do  you  not  observe,  running  through  all  these 
last,  the  same  materializing  elements  ?  Your  property  is  not 
you — land-owner,  ship-builder,  finance-controller  !  There  is 
the  I  that  lies  behind  the  accomplishment.  There  is  a  liv- 
ing, controlling  being  behind  all  achievements.  Character  is 
the  fashioning  of  that.  I  propound  to  you  not  the  modes  of 
character  that  exist  and  are  operative  in  this  world,  but  I  de- 
clare to  you  that  the  Christian  character,  distinctly  set  forth, 
is  the  very  ideal  of  true  manhood ;  a  "  man  in  Christ  Jesus" 
— a  Christian,  as  the  Bible  would  fashion  him,  is  the  true 
model  of  a  man. 

1.  I  urge  you,  therefore,  to  accept,  not  these  secular  ideals 
of  character,  but  the  true  Christian  one,  because,  in  the  first 
place,  the  divine  power,  as  a  living  influence  upon  your  souls, 
is  the  only  reconstructive  force  adequate  to  your  need.  The 
ideals  of  character  which  men  form,  exterior  to  themselves, 
really  have  no  transforming  power  uj^on  their  dispositions. 
What  man  needs  is  a  perfect  control  of  his  animal  nature,  of 
his  selfishness,  his  pride,  his  secularity.  What  he  needs  is 
the  predominance  of  the  spiritual  over  the  carnal  elements. 
Without  that,  man  can  not  be  man.  Tlie  great  mass  of  the 
human  family  are  yet  but  animals,  with  a  little  garnishing 
of  manhood  here  and  there.  For  the  most  part,  spiritual 
qualities  are  but  as  flowers  in  a  button-hole.  The  body, 
from  head  to  foot,  is  one  great  mass  of  flesh,  with  here  and 
there  a  morality  or  a  virtue  stuck  in  as  a  little  decoration. 
What  man  needs  is  a  complete  transformation,  so  that  the 
emanating  influences  of  life  shall  no  longer  proceed  from  the 
material,  the  selfish,  and  the  secular  instincts.  We  want  a 
reconstructive  power  that  shall  bring  the  spiritual  elements 
into  the  ascendency,  and  hold  the  others  down.  Now  men 
are  mostly  like  boys,  attemj^ting  to  ride  horses  that  run 
away  with  them,  because  the  horse  is  more  than  the  rider. 
The  rider  must  be  more  than  the  horse.  We  want  to  sit 
astride  of  the  world,  astride  of  all  fierce  passions  and  of 


Christianity  a  Vital  Foece.  809 

all  carnal  influences,  and  control  tliem  in  such  a  way  that 
they  shall  not  run  away  with  us,  but  be  completely  subject 
to  all  the  higher  spiritual  elements  that  belong  to  our  na- 
ture. As  it  is  the  summer  sky  that  gives  the  harvest  leave 
to  get  ripe,  so  it  is  God  over  us  that  determines  whether 
there  shall  be  developed  in  us  this  spiritual  power.  Out  of 
Christ,  man  will  still  be  secular.  In  Christ  you  will  become 
spiritual,  but  only  in  him ;  no  man  can  develop  this  spiritual- 
ity except  through  the  power  which  comes  from  the  Lord 
Jesus  Christ.  No  other  name  is  given  under  heaven  where- 
by he  can  do  this.  This  is  the  only  influence  which  has 
jjroved  itself  competent  to  do  it,  and  it  is  declared  that  it  is 
the  only  influence  that  ever  will  do  it. 

2.  This  developing  power  in  the  soul  reveals  the  only 
harmonizing  elements  around  which  all  of  a  man's  nature 
can  reorganize  itself.  In  this  scheme,  love  is  the  point  of 
crystallization.  "  Be  ye  perfect,"  says  our  Savior,  "  as  your 
Father  which  is  in  heaven  is  perfect."  How  was  he  perfect  ? 
Be  ye  perfect,  not  as  other  men  think  to  be  ;  not  as  warriors 
are  perfect ;  not  as  statesmen  are  perfect.  Do  not,  in  other 
Avords,  adopt  the  ideal  of  man,  but  accept  God's  ideal,  and 
be  perfect  according  to  his  ideal  of  perfection.  What  was 
that? 

"He  maketh  his  sun  to  rise  on  the  evil  and  on  the  good, 
and  sendeth  rain  on  the  just  and  on  the  unjust." 

Impartial,  disinterested  love,  beneficence,  is  the  model  of 
God's  perfection.  The  direction  of  the  Savior  is,  then. 
When  you  attempt  to  become  perfect,  organize  around  that 
central  element  of  love,  even  as  God's  whole  nature  is  or- 
ganized about  it.  There  is  no  other  element  than  divine 
love  upon  which  we  can  organize  our  dispositions  and  per- 
fectly harmonize  our  characters.  Although  men  do  contrive 
to  give  predominance  to  the  feelings  which  flow  from  this 
element,  there  is  yet  more  or  less  of  discord  or  of  rebellion 
in  the  soul.  Crown  pride,  and  cause  it  to  walk  through 
the  chambers  of  the  soul,  and  there  are  many  faculties  which 


310  Christianity  a  Vital  Force. 

hide  themselves  and  say,  I  will  not  bow  down  to  Pride,  if  it 
be  king  over  me.  Crown  vanity,  and  there  will  be  many 
parts  of  the  soul  that  will  not  yield  to  this  newly-crowned 
king,  but  will  say,  Nay,  I  am  higher  than  thou,  and  I  will 
never  bow  down  to  King  Vanity.  Crown  the  reason,  and 
there  are  many  feelings  that  will  say.  We  will  no  more  rise 
up  before  crowned  Reason,  and  own  it  our  king,  than  the 
flowers  will  rise  up  before  an  iceberg  and  call  it  Summer. 
Crown  beauty,  and  there  will  be  commotion  in  all  the  soul ; 
but  there  is  not  in  all  the  soul  one  single  faculty  that,  under 
stress  of  temptation,  under  provocation,  or  under  trial,  will 
call  out, "  O  King  Beauty,  save  me !"  Crown  the  conscience, 
and  although  more  of  the  faculties  of  the  soul  will  follow  that 
than  any  other  of  the  leaders  I  have  assumed,  yet  what  will 
ensue  ?  Crown  conscience — its  crown  is  of  iron ;  its  sceptre 
is  relentless.  If  conscience  be  king,  the  soul  has  a  despot  on 
the  throne ;  and  often  and  often  there  be  many  members  of 
a  man's  nature  that  reluct,  and  resist,  and  refuse  to  obey. 
Bring  into  the  ascendency  love,  and  crown  it,  and  there  is 
not  one  part  of  reason  that  doth  not  before  Love  say,  "  It  is 
my  master."  There  is  nothing  in  all  the  imagination  that 
is  not  wilUng  to  twine  around  about  love  and  say,  "  Love 
rules ;  and  it  truly  inspires."  Pride  and  vanity,  and  all  the 
ambitious  foi'ces  of  the  soul,  will  bow  down  in  the  train  of 
love ;  and  if  that  stand  king  in  the  soul,  all  the  faculties  can 
find  their  place,  and  harmoniously  move  round  about  the 
well-adjusted  centre.  It  is  the  only  feeling  around  which 
you  can  reconstruct  the  human  character. 

3.  It  is  only  in  a  character  fashioned  upon  the  model  of  the 
Lord  Jesus  Christ  that  we  can  find  relief  and  reconciliation 
from  things  seemingly  oppugnant  or  hopelessly  antagonistic ; 
nor,  in  any  other  scheme  of  character,  can  you  reconcile  aspi- 
ration and  content.  In  all  ancient  experience  and  in  all  an- 
cient philosophy,  perpetual  aspiration  was  the  destruction 
of  content,  until  content  became  almost  the  synonym  of  stu- 
pidity, and  aspiration  was  restless  and  enfeebled  in  all  its  de- 


Christianity  a  Yital  Force.  311 

sires.  It  still  sought,  but  seldom  found.  In  Christ  both  these 
elements  are  perfectly  reconciled.  There  is  no  bound  to  as- 
piration ;  for  behind  all  the  events  which  are  transpiring  in 
this  life  are  so  many  educators,  so  many  instruments  by  which 
aspiration  is  held  in  check,  and  content  in  our  situation  and 
circumstances  results. 

Where,  under  any  other  scheme  of  reconstruction  in  the 
soul,  can  you  reconcile  conscience  and  peace  ?  How  can  you 
bring  a  man  into  condemnation  with  himself?  How,  measur- 
ing day  by  day,  can  you  show  that,  according  to  any  just  rule 
or  measure,  a  man  is  living  in  sin  and  transgression,  promising 
and  breaking  his  word,  striving  and  failing,  building  only  to 
mar?  How  can  you  bring  conscience  to  have  its  perfect 
work,  condemning,  yet  inspiring  and  stimulating  ?  It  can  be 
done  just  as  the  mother  does  it,  who  never  allows  her  child's 
ideal  to  sleej) ;  who  by  word,  as  well  as  by  example,  perpetu- 
ally stirs  up  her  child  to  think  better  things,  to  aspire  to  bet- 
ter things,  to  reach  up  to  better  thmgs ;  chides  all  delinquen- 
cies, and  yet  so  chides  that  the  same  arm  and  the  same  lip 
that  chides  brings  also  quiet  and  rest.  Love  can  do  what 
conscience  can  not  do,  and  what  ideality  can  not  do.  Now  in 
Jesus  Christ  there  is  perpetual  measuring  or  judgment  of  con- 
science in  condemnation,  and  yet  there  is  perpetual  resurrec- 
tion of  love  and  help  which  more  than  balances  all  condem- 
nation. 

Ordinarily  men  are  as  pendulums  between  the  eighth  and 
the  seventh  of  Romans,  taking  in  condemnation  upon  one  side, 
and  hope  on  the  other ;  and  so  they  oscillate,  vibrating  be- 
tween hope  and  fear.  But  there  is  a  reconciliation.  It  is  a 
reconciliation,  however,  that  can  not  take  place  except  in  a 
soul  that  is  in  the  possession  of  Christ,  and  subject  to  the 
blessed  rule  of  love.  In  that  soul  there  is  perfect  reconcilia- 
tion, so  that  you  may  feel  every  day,  "  I  come  short ;  I  am  a 
sinner,  and  yet  I  am  reconciled ;  I  rebel,  yet  I  love ;  I  disobey, 
yet  I  long  to  obey ;  I  am  sorry,  yet  I  am  comforted ;  I  am  my 
own,  yet  I  am  more  his."    The  most  opposite  experiences  take 


312  Christianity  a  Yital  Force. 

place,  and  are  perfectly  reconciled  by  the  transforming  influ- 
ence of  that  loye  which  is  shed  abroad  in  the  soul  by  the  pow- 
er of  the  Holy  Ghost. 

I  do  not  infer  this  logically,  but  I  state  it  as  the  actual, 
practical  experience  of  thrice  ten  thousand  who  live  now,  and 
of  many  more  who  have  lived,  have  triumphed,  and  are  now 
at  rest. 

4.  The  divine  power  in  the  soul  harmonizes  man  with  his 
fellow-men.  All  men  are  naturally  aggressive.  Hitherto  it 
has  been  an  aggression  mainly  by  means  of  combativeness 
and  destructiveness.  The  whole  world  has  been  in  contest. 
Men  have  ground  upon  each  other  with  perpetual  attrition,  or 
assaulted  each  other  by  perpetual  violence.  Now  Christ  in- 
tensifies, if  it  were  possible,  the  impetus  to  aggression,  but  it 
is  the  aggression  of  the  spiritual  and  moral  forces — no  longer 
of  the  animal  and  physical.  It  is  the  aggressiveness  of  benefi- 
cence, not  of  malevolence.  Without  Christ,  human  activity 
is  merely  of  the  organizing  forces.  All  the  constructive  forces 
that  men  employ  are  selfish.  Man  is  like  the  coral  builder, 
which  is  a  little  worm,  in  its  own  little  cell,  doing  its  own  lit- 
tle work,  adding  its  own  little  substance  to  the  work  of  oth- 
ers, and  dying  where  it  began,  leaving  the  reef  somewhat  en- 
larged by  what  was  only  a  selfish  architecture.  Christ  repre- 
sents his  kuigdom  by  a  wind : 

"  The  wind  bloweth  where  it  listeth,  and  thou  hearest  the 
sound  thereof,  but  canst  not  tell  whence  it  cometli  and  whith- 
er it  goeth :  so  is  every  one  that  is  born  of  the  Spirit." 

Come,  O  south  wind,  bring  vapor  from  the  sea,  and  warmth 
from  the  equator;  bring  birds  and  grass,  spring  and  sum- 
mer :  come,  O  breath  of  heaven !  spread  wide  abroad  over  all 
the  continent ;  come  to  the  great  and  come  to  the  little ;  come 
to  the  poor  and  come  to  the  rich;  come  to  the  sick  man 
through  his  lattice ;  come  to  all,  bringing — no  man  can  meas- 
ure what,  for  abundance ;  no  man  can  tell  whence  it  cometh 
or  whither  it  goeth ;  it  wanders  up  and  down  the  hills,  and 
through  all  the  valleys,  and  makes  itself  known  from  the  ben- 


!•'  Christianity  a  Vital  Force.  313 

efits  which  it  brings ;  yet  no  man  can  see  the  viewless  course 
of  the  air.  So  it  is  with  the  spii'it  of  "beneficence — the  true 
Christ-like  spirit  in  the  human  souL  It  comes,  we  know  not 
whence ;  it  goes,  we  can  not  tell  how  or  where.  It  is  uni- 
versal It  is  endless.  It  is  bountiful  as  the  summer,  and 
blessed  as  God. 

5.  The  divine  power  in  the  human  soul  gives  to  the  whole 
economy  of  human  life,  and  to  the  whole  flow  of  events  also, 
a  reconciliation  which  nothing  else  can.  Life  is  full  of  incon- 
stancy, judged  fi'om  our  philosoj^hy.  All  literatures  agree 
alike  in  this,  that  things  have  been  unequal  in  this  world ; 
that  there  seems  to  have  been  no  universal  and  uniform  mor- 
al government ;  that  causes  do  not  seem  to  have  been  con- 
stant ;  that  goodness  seemingly  is  punished,  and  evil  reward- 
ed ;  that  men  have  groaned,  or  sang,  or  sighed,  as  the  seeming 
creatures  of  circumstance.  There  seems  to  each  individual 
consciousness  a  strange  adjustment  of  the  events  that  are  hap- 
pening in  our  lives ;  and  every  day  we  see  things  that  we  can 
not  account  for;  and  men  will  never  be  done  asking  about 
mysteries  and  "  mysterious  providences."  There  is  no  recon- 
ciliation apparently,  from  the  human  stand-point,  for  conflict- 
ing events.  There  never  yet  was  found,  and  I  think  will 
never  be,  a  key  that  shall  solve  these  mysteries.  But  if 
you  teach  men  the  truth  that  is  in  Christ  Jesus;  that  the 
Spirit  of  God  is  fashioning,  not  our  outward  life  (except  as  it 
stands  related  to  the  more  glorious  result),  but  the  inward  and 
spiritual  life ;  that  Christ  is  not  working  for  the  results  which 
appear  in  this  life  alone,  but  for  results  which  shall  appear  in 
the  life  hereafter — that  reconciles  them ;  or,  if  it  does  not  rec- 
oncile, it  settles.  I  do  not  care  what  befalls  you;  you  do  not 
yourself  care  what  befalls  you,  so  long  as  you  have  the  cer- 
tainty that  the  end  of  it  shall  be  right.  Your  ship  goes  to 
sea ;  a  storm  follows  it ;  you  get  no  tidings  of  it ;  yet,  if  you 
have  confidence  in  her  crew  and  in  her  commander,  if  you 
are  sure  that  she  will  make  the  port,  it  matters  very  little  to 
you  whether  she  has  more  or  less  of  stormy  voyage.     Storms 


31i  Christianity  a  Vital  Force.  "* 

may  even  be  an  impetus  and  a  help.  So  in  human  life.  Once 
give  me  to  believe  that  I  am  a  child  of  God;  that  my  Father's 
Spirit  has  reinhabited  my  soul ;  that  all  that  is  happening  to 
me,  whether  seemingly  good  or  evil,  is  the  working  out  of  a 
higher  nature  from  my  lower  one — once  let  me  believe  that 
this  life  is  one  from  which  there  is  to  come  a  spuitual  bemg, 
and  that  the  oppressions,  the  raspings,  the  piercings,  the  sor- 
rows, the  anguish,  the  disappointment,  the  ten  thousand  ine- 
qualities, the  rude  buffetings,  the  downthrows,  and  all  the 
events  which  are  happening  to  me  here  are  but  the  prepara- 
tion for  that  higher  life,  and  its  development  in  me,  and  I  am 
content. 

Once,  on  a  summer's  day,  I  went  with  my  brother  to  extract 
a  crystal  from  the  rock.  With  a  mighty  sledge-hammer  he 
vigorously  dealt  blow  after  blow  upon  the  rock,  and  chipped 
off  piece  after  piece.  At  last  the  top  of  the  crystal  appeared. 
Then  one  might  see  what  he  was  after,  for  it  had  not  shown 
upon  the  outer  surface  of  the  rock.  When  the  crystal  appear- 
ed, then  the  whole  strife  became  how  so  to  break  the  rock 
away  from  it,  and  how  so  to  strike  the  rock  as  to  extract  the 
crystal.  The  rock  was  good  for  nothing ;  the  crystal  was  ev- 
ery thing. 

The  soul  is  man's  crystal,  and  the  body  is  but  the  incasing 
rock  that  holds  it.  God's  providences  are  smiting  upon  the 
rock,  and  breaking  and  cutting  it  away,  and  extracting  the 
precious  crystal,  Avhich  is  worth  incomparably  more  than  its 
setting  in  the  rock. 

So  we  get,  from  the  Christian's  stand-point,  a  harmonious 
view  of  all  the  events  of  life,  if  not  in  their  detail,  yet  in  their 
more  general  aggregate  results. 

This  is  the  only  view,  also,  which  redeems  death  from  being 
a  catastrophe,  and  exalts  it  into  a  victory.  There  could  be 
no  greater  contrast  than  that  which  exists  between  the  Old 
Testament  and  the  New  in  this  regard.  In  the  Old  Testa- 
ment, death  is  a  misfortune ;  in  the  New,  a  coronation.  In 
the  Old,  death  is  a  weakness ;  in  the  New,  strength.     In  the 


*  Chkistianity  a  Vital  Force.  815 

Old,  death  is  the  end ;  in  the  New,  the  beginning.  In  the 
Old,  death  is  a  thing  for  tears ;  in  the  New,  an  occasion  for 
songs  and  rejoicmg.  Men  dying  in  the  Old  Testament  times 
did  die ;  men  dying  in  the  Christian  dispensation,  and  in  a 
Christian  hope,  do  not  die.  In  the  Old  Testament,  death 
took  men;  in  the  New  Testament,  Christ  comes  for  them, 
and  bears  them  home  to  glory.  All  the  way  through,  and  in 
every  point  of  view,  the  character  of  the  Christian  is  thus  set 
forth,  in  the  New  Testament,  as  filled  with  inspiration,  with 
power,  with  hope,  with  victory. 

1.  If  this  view  be  correct,  I  remark  that  there  is  a  very  great 
difference  between  reasoning  upon  Christianity  and  testing 
Christianity.  No  man  is  competent  to  determine  questions 
in  regard  to  Christianity  until  he  has  put  his  whole  soul  into 
the  attitude  of  Christ ;  until  he  has  drank  in  the  spirit  of  his 
Master.  Doubt  in  respect  to  historical  questions  is  one  thing, 
and  quite  a  different  thing  from  doubt  as  to  the  reality  and 
potency  of  the  system  itself  If  you  were  to  set  aside  every 
single  historical  element,  but  were  nevertheless  to  put  your- 
self in  the  attitiade  which  Christ  requires,  and  open  your  heart 
to  the  interpreting  spirit  which  he  sends,  your  consciousness 
would  be  more  than  all  your  doubts,  all  your  reasonings  to 
the  contrary.  What  do  I  care  if  it  should  be  told  to  me 
that  Christianity  stumbles  in  philosophy  at  every  step  ?  Let 
me  become  personally  the  recipient  of  that  divine  influence, 
and  my  experience  is  worth  more  to  me  than  other  people's 
reasonings.  You  may  demonstrate  that  it  is  not  possible  for 
a  flower  to  grow  in  a  given  vale,  but  if  I  find  it  there,  what 
is  your  reasoning  worth  to  me  ?  Flowers  are  generally  the 
best  evidence  as  to  where  they  will  or  will  not  grow,  botan- 
ists to  the  contrary  notwithstanding. 

I  have  bought  tropical  morning-glory  seeds  for  the  green- 
house, with  the  assurance  of  the  seedsman  that  I  could  not 
raise  them  out  of  doors.  I  did  raise  them  out  of  doors ;  that 
is  the  answer  I  gave  to  him.  "  But,"  he  says,  "  it  is  not  pos- 
sible, in  our  summer,  to  raise  them ;"  but  I  did  it.     "  The  sum- 


316  Christianity  a  Vital  Force. 

mer  is  not  long  enough,  or  warm  enough,  to  raise  them  here." 
I  have,  raised  them,  and  I  shall  not  give  up  my  argument  iipon 
that  question. 

If  a  man  says  that  there  never  -was  a  Christ,  or  that  he  was 
only  a  man,  I  answer  that  I  have  found  him  of  whom  Moses 
and  the  prophets  spake.  I  have  asked  him, "  What  wilt  thou  ?" 
and  he  has  told  me ;  I  have  put  my  soul  and  my  heart,  as  he 
has  commanded  me,  into  his  hand.  Will  any  man  now  un- 
dertake to  reason  me  out  of  the  result  ?  I  know  in  whom  I 
have  trusted,  and  know  what  he  has  done  for  me.  Is  the  mu- 
sic of  my  life,  the  inspiration  of  every  faculty,  the  transforma- 
tion of  my  views,  the  regeneration  of  my  hopes — are  these 
nothmg  ?  Am  I  to  go  back  eighteen  hundred  years,  with  the 
skeptical  philosopher,  to  reason  about  Jerusalem,  and  about 
the  Lord  Jesus  Christ,  and  not  reason  upon  my  own  actual, 
daily,  positive  experience  ? 

If  a  man,  intelligent  in  other  respects,  not  given  to  enthusi- 
asm, not  diseased  by  morbid  feelings,  but  rational  in  all  things, 
whom  you  would  believe  in  respect  to  any  and  all  of  the  trans- 
actions of  daily  life,  bears  witness,  not  alone,  but  with  multi- 
tudes— with  a  long  succession  of  witnesses — that  there  is  such 
a  fact  as  Christ  in  the  soul,  and  the  hope  of  glory ;  that  there 
is  such  an  experience  as  that  the  Holy  Ghost  descends  into 
the  soul,  cleanses  it,  inspires  it,  reorganizes  it,  fills  it  with  faith, 
and  love,  and  hope,  and  joy,  and  that  it  abides  with  us — is  not 
that  testimony  to  be  accepted?  Will  you  accept  a  man's 
reasoning  upon  things  that  hapj^ened  a  thousand  years  ago, 
and  i-eject  his  positive  testimony  in  regard  to  the  things  that 
are  occurring  every  day  ?  Nay  !  Wlien  there  is  a  succession 
of  witnesses  coming  through  a  period  of  more  than  two  thou- 
sand years  do-^ai  to  us,  bearing  witness  in  every  possible 
emergency — bearing  witness  from  the  stake ;  from  the  dun- 
geon; from  the  battle-field;  from  the  mountain  cave;  from 
sick-chambers — when  we  see  human  life  transformed,  and 
made  magnificent  and  glorious  through  sufiering — characters 
efiiilging  from  weakness  and  obscurity — when  all  the  record 


Christianity  a  Yital  Force.  317 

of  the  past  is  made  luminous  with  the  memorials  of  what  has 
been  done  in  men's  souls  by  the  power  of  God  through  Jesus 
Christ,  are  we  to  take  this  long  cloud  of  Avitnesses  that  have 
lived  but  are  now  passed  away,  and  all  that  now  live  and  bear 
the  same  testimony,  and  count  it  all  as  nothing  ? 

There  are  praying  souls  in  this  house  that  see  more  stars 
every  day  than  are  to  be  seen  during  a  whole  lifetime  in  the 
encircling  heavens ;  is  their  testimony  nothing  ? 

Did  your  mother  die  as  the  mole  dies  ?  and  is  there  no  more 
of  your  mother  than  there  is  of  the  mole  ?  Is  your  child  dead  ? 
Are  you  not  proud  to  think,  rather,  that  your  child  can  not 
die  any  more  than  your  own  soul  could  die  ?  I  knoio  that 
there  is  a  life  to  come.  Shall  I  believe  my  eye,  which  is  a 
mere  organ  of  sense,  and  not  believe  my  soul,  which  is  higher 
m  grade  than  my  eye,  in  its  testimony  ? 

There  are  multitudes  of  persons  who  are  asking  for  argu- 
ment— asking  for  reasoning  upon  the  great  truths  of  Chris- 
tianity. "  The  words  that  I  speak  unto  you,"  says  your  Mas- 
ter, "  are  spirit ;  they  are  life."  Christ's  argument  to  you  is 
this :  My  son,  give  me  your  heart,  and  you  shall  never  doubt. 
If  you  ask  me  to  reason  upon  the  great  truths  of  Christianity 
with  you,  I  say  to  you.  Give  your  heart  to  the  Lord  Jesus 
Christ,  and  see  if  those  effects  which  he  has  promised  do  not 
follow,  and  see  if  they  do  not  amount  to  an  argument  trans- 
cending in  power  and  validity  any  other  argument  that  can 
be  produced. 

2.  If  this  view  of  the  spiritual  or  Christian  character  is  cor- 
rect, is  there  not  reason  to  fear  that  many  persons  who  believe 
themselves  to  be  Christians,  and  to  be  perfectly  safe,  come  far 
short  of  a  true  Christian  life  ? 

Do  not  these  views  mark  very  clearly  the  distinction  be- 
tween the  life  that  is  wrought  by  God's  power  upon  the  soul, 
and  the  ordinary  life  which  springs  up  under  the  action  of 
natural  causes  ?  If  you  will  read  the  immortal  thirteenth  of 
Corinthians^  you  will  learn  that  though  a  man  have  all  knowl- 
edge, and  all  faith,  and  all  ordinary  charity,  and  even  give  his 


818  Christianity  a  Vital  Force. 

body  to  be  burned  in  enthusiasm  and  in  fidelity  to  his  own 
convictions,  yet,  if  he  has  not  this  divine  life,  all  his  knowledge 
is  vain,  all  his  eloquence  is  as  sounding  brass  and  a  tLnkluig 
cymbal,  and  all  his  charity  is  as  nothing  at  all. 

There  are  many  persons  who  are  moral,  and  think  that  they 
are  Christians.  There  are  many  persons  that  are  intensely 
churchly;  that  love  the  Sabbath  more  than  they  do  God;  that 
love  the  Church  more  than  they  do  Christ;  that  love  the  serv- 
ices of  the  Church  and  the  circumstances  of  worship  far  more 
than  they  do  the  spiritual  commands  of  the  Lord  Jesus  Christ. 
There  is  reason  to  fear  that  there  are  many  persons  who  call 
themselves  Christians  that  have  never  had  the  vital  change, 
and  do  not  live  in  true,  spiritual,  personal  unity  with  God, 
Yet  no  man  is  a  Christian  until  Christ's  Spirit  dwells  in  hun. 
No  man  is  truly  a  Christian  who  is  not  vitalized  every  day 
by  the  mind  of  God. 

3.  I  remark,  once  more,  that  no  man  can  come  into  this  po- 
sition and  become  a  Christian  by  his  own  simple,  unaided 
power.  I  certainly  do  not  wish  to  take  away  the  motives  for 
activity,  for  every  man  must  be  a  worker  with  God  for  his 
own  salvation ;  but  no  unaided  intelligence,  no  power  of  the 
soul  exerted  merely  by  yourself,  will  be  suflicient  for  you. 
Unless  God  by  the  Holy  Ghost  works  in  you,  you  will  come 
short  of  that  very  vivific  influence  which  is  the  peculiar  test 
and  characteristic  of  the  Christian.  "  If,  then,  I  can  not  help 
myself,  whose  fault  is  it  ?"  It  is  not  a  question  of  fault. 
"Without  holiness,  no  man  can  see  the  Lord."  You  can  not 
afford  to  lose  the  monitions  of  the  Spirit  of  God.  You  can 
not  afford  not  to  be  a  Christian.  The  question  with  you  is 
this :  If  it  be  required  that  the  Spirit  of  God  shall  move  upon 
my  heart,  what  shall  I  do  ?  My  answer  is,  God's  Spirit  is 
loving  and  gentle,  persuasive  and  universal.  It  is  distilled 
upon  you  as  the  dews  of  the  night  upon  the  blossoms.  It 
overhangs  the  earth  as  the  sun  overhangs  this  continent. 
God  knocks  at  the  doors  of  your  heart,  of  your  conscience, 
and  of  your  xmderstanding ;  thrice  ten  thousand  times  you 
have  resisted  hun ;  you  have  turned  away.     Open  now  your 


Christianity  a  Vital  Fokce.  819 

heart ;  for,  although  you  can  not,  without  the  Spiiit  of  God, 
be  a  Christian,  yet  you  can  not  turn  your  heart  toward  God 
with  even  the  sigh  of  a  wish  but  instantly  the  Spirit  of 
God  is  with  you.  "  The  bruised  reed  will  he  not  break,  and 
the  smoking  flax  will  he  not  quench,  until  he  brings  forth 
judgment  unto  victory."  "What  if  you  were  sick,  and  were 
to  send  for  a  physician  without  whose  ministrations  you  could 
never  recover,  but  when  he  came  there  stood  in  the  gateway 
a  fierce  dog  that  would  not  let  him  enter  ?  What  if,  going 
around  your  boundaries,  he  should  find  armed  men  here  and 
there  that  turned  him  away  ?  What  if,  peradventure  work- 
ing his  way  to  your  door,  he  should  find  the  door  fast,  the 
shutters  and  windows  tightly  barred,  and  no  entrance  permit- 
ted ?  You  might  sicken  and  die  needlessly,  because,  though 
he  has  the  means  of  your  recovery,  you  would  not  give  him 
access. 

God's  Spirit  comes  to  many  and  many  a  man  who  will  not 
give  it  admission.  Around  stand  men,  with  clubs  like  Pler- 
cules,  defending  the  sentry-house  of  the  soul,  God's  SjDirit 
strives  with  many  and  many  a  man,  saying, "  I  have  stood 
knocking  at  the  door  of  your  soul  until  my  locks  are  wet  with 
the  morning  dew ;  open  that  I  may  come  in  unto  you,  and 
abide  with  you." 

Many  of  you  have  grieved  the  Spirit  of  God  through  many 
long  years,  but  it  yet  comes  to  you  bringing  hope,  purity,  and 
reconciliation ;  ofiering  you  an  entrance  into  this  new  life, 
without  which  you  shall  never  see  the  kingdom  of  heaven. 
It  came  with  precious,  priceless  blessings ;  you  have  turned 
away ;  you  have  soiled  your  heart  so  that  it  could  not  dwell 
there ;  you  have  refused  it  obedience  and  entrance.  Again 
God's  Spirit  comes  to  you,  to-day — I  know  it  by  the  stillness 
of  the  house.  I  know  it  by  your  upturned  faces  and  your 
close  attention.  There  are  many  among  you  with  whom 
God's  Spirit  is  even  now  strivmg.  Grieve  not  the  Spirit  of 
God  by  which  you  are  to  be  saved.  At  last,  change — change 
— and  say,  Enter,  blessed  Sj^irit !  enter,  and  transform  my 
soul  into  the  likeness  of  God ! 


XV. 


II.— X 


Preached  in  Plymouth  Church,  Brooklyn^  Sabbath  morning, 
January  12th,  1868. 


Old    Age. 


"Kemember  now  thy  Creator  in  the  days  of  thy  youth,  while  the  ev'il  days 
come  not,  nor  the  years  draw  nigh,  M'hen  thou  shalt  say,  I  have  no  pleas- 
ure in  them."— EccLESiASTES,  xii.,  1. 

This  passage,  which  stands  in  the  midst  of  a  remarkable 
and  eminently  practical  description  of  youth  and  old  age,  has 
usually  been  construed  as  a  dissuasive  from  pleasure,  as  a  dis- 
suasive from  many  of  the  innocent  enjoyments  of  youth;  and 
as  teaching  that  we  are  to  bear  in  mind  the  coming  of  old 
age,  and  that  we  are  not,  since  we  are  the  creatures  of  an 
hour,  to  unduly  estimate  the  transient  joys  and  pleasures  of 
life.  If  we  take  into  consideration  the  closing  verses  of  this 
chapter,  I  think  we  shall  give  another  construction  to  the 
text :  "  Let  us  hear  the  conclusion  of  the  whole  matter :" 
"Fear  God,  and  keep  his  commandments;  for  this  is  the 
whole  duty  of  man."  "  Remember  now  thy  Creator  in  the 
days  of  thy  youth Fear  God,  and  keep  his  command- 
ments :"  that  is  the  way  to  remember  him — "  while  the  evil 
days  come  not,  nor  the  years  draw  nigh,  when  thou  shalt 
say,  I  have  no  pleasure  in  them."  That  is,  remembering  that 
there  is  such  a  thing  as  a  miserable  old  age,  so  conduct 
yourself  in  youth  by  remembering  God  and  obeying  his  com- 
mandments that  the  misery  of  old  age  shall  be  escaped,  and  a 
brighter  day  be  awai-ded  you.  In  other  words,  this  passage 
seems  to  me  to  be  a  cautionary  suggestion  as  to  the  meth- 
od of  so  living  as  to  make  old  age  desirable,  beautiful,  and 
happy. 

Old  age  is  a  distant  port  for  which  the  whole  human  race 


324  Old  Age. 

start,  toward  which  they  steer.  More  than  half  perish  at  the 
commencement  of  the  voyage.  Should  every  alternate  ship 
go  down  before  reaching  the  light-ship  off  the  harbor  of  New 
York,  it  would  represent  the  human  race,  one  half  of  which 
dies  in  infancy.  Of  the  remainder,  at  least  one  half  perishes 
before  reaching  the  age  of  forty-five.  If  we  say  that  one  be- 
yond the  age  of  sixty  may  be  called  an  old  man,  probably  not 
a  quarter  of  the  human  race  ever  reaches  old  age.  The  fact 
that  the  average  of  adult  life  is  placed  at  thirty-three  years 
is  itself  a  testimony  on  this  subject  most  remarkable.  Men 
do  not,  on  an  avei'age,  live  out  half  their  days.  Eighty  years 
is  but  a  fair  term  of  life,  under  good  conditions  and  with 
proper  care.  The  race  of  man,  comprehensively  regarded, 
do  not  live  forty  years.  One  half  of  life  is  thrown  away,  then, 
in  every  generation.  The  economic  waste,  the  enormous 
depredation  upon  wealth,  upon  power,  upon  happiness,  to  say 
nothing  of  virtue  and  morality,  are  worthy  the  consideration 
of  j)olitical  economists.  Men  have  a  right  to  old  age.  It  is 
a  part  of  the  allotment  of  life,  and  it  belongs  to  every  one. 
Men  are  defrauded  if  they  do  not  possess  it.  They  get  so 
much  less  than  belongs  to  the  patrimony  which  God  has  pro- 
vided for  them.  Sometimes  men  are  defrauded  of  it  by  the 
sins  of  their  jDarents  or  of  their  ancestors.  This  transmissive 
laAv,  by  which  children  are  punished  for  the  sins  of  their  par- 
ents, is  silent,  yet  more  august  and  terrible  than  was  Sinai 
when  all  enflamed.  Many  children  come  into  life,  and  the 
experienced  eye  pronounces  it  impossible  for  them  to  live 
many  years.  Parents  weep  at  the  strange  Providenc'e,  and 
the  mysterious  dealings  of  God,  when  there  is  neither  strange- 
ness nor  mystery  in  it.  Thoiisands  and  thousands  are  born 
who  should  have  had  a  right  in  life,  but  whose  hold  is  so  brit- 
tle that  the  first  wind  shakes  them,  and  they  fall  like  untime- 
ly fruit.  Some  fall  by  accident,  some  in  the  discharge  of  du- 
ties which  call  them  to  offer  up  their  lives  as  a  sacrifice  for 
the  common  weal.  The  greatest  number,  however,  are  de- 
prived of  a  good  old  age  by  their  own  ignorance  or  by  their 


Old  Age.  825 

own  miscondiict ;  and  those  that  reach  old  age  too  often  find 
that  it  is  a  land  of  sorrow.  Such  is  the  spectacle  that  we 
witness  in  many  instances,  that  it  is  not  strange  that  one 
should  desire  not  to  grow  old.  One  dreads  to  see  gray  hairs 
in  poverty,  in  beggary — dependent  upon  a  charity  which  is 
as  inconstant  as  the  tides.  One  shrinks  from  old  age  when 
it  is  full  of  pains,  when  it  is  crippled,  shrunken,  helpless,  hope- 
less, and  hapless,  still  more  when  the  reason  wanes  and  the 
second  childhood  (a  kindly  name  for  imbecility)  dawns. 

Now  old  age  was  not  designed  to  be  mournful,  but  beauti- 
ful. Old  age  is  a  part  of  the  scheme  of  life,  which  was  de- 
signed to  be  beautiful  from  beginning  to  end.  It  is  the  close 
of  a  symphony,  beautiful  in  its  inception,  rolling  on  grandly, 
and  termmating  in  a  climax  of  sublimity.  It  is  harmonious 
and  admirable,  according  to  the  scheme  of  nature.  The 
charms  of  infancy,  the  hopes  of  the  spring  of  youth,  the  vigor 
of  manhood,  and  the  serenity  and  tranquillity,  the  wisdom 
and  peace  of  old  age — all  these  together  constitute  the  true 
human  life,  with  its  beginning,  middle,  and  end — a  glorious 
epoch. 

The  end  of  summer  is  often  more  glorious  than  the  sum- 
mer itself.  October  is  beyond  all  comparison  the  crown  of 
the  year ;  and  the  word  of  inspiration  saith, "  The  hoary  head 
is  a  crown  of  glory,  if  it  be  found  m  the  way  of  righteous- 
ness." While  a  sordid  old  man,  who  has  corrupted  his  heart 
and  filled  his  life  with  vices,  is  a  hideous  spectacle,  a  pure 
heart,  a  sweet  nature,  a  generous  and  cheerful  soul,  walking 
among  the  young,  and  mildly  manifesting  in  his  own  life 
what  are  the  fruits  of  true  piety,  is  at  once  a  blessing  and  en- 
couragement. There  is  nothing  more  beautiful  than  a  serene, 
virtuous,  and  happy  old  age ;  and  such  an  old  age  belongs  to 
every  individual's  life,  if  he  only  knows  how  to  build  it. 

Every  one  of  us,  but  especially  those  who  are  beginning  in 
life,  is  aiming  at  a  serene  and  happy  old  age,  and  I  propose 
to  put  before  you  some  considerations  which  shall  direct  your 
attention  to  the  methods  of  attaining  it.     I  beseech  you  not 


326  Old  Age. 

to  think  that  it  is  so  far  off  that  you  need  not  consider  the 
subject,  for  time  runs  with  incredibly  swift  feet;  and  al- 
though you  may  now  think  of  yourself  as  being  young  or  in 
middle  life,  yet,  long  before  you  are  aware  of  it,  you  will  find 
that  others  think  you  old.  Old  age  is  making  haste;  and 
there  are  none  of  us  that  can  be  young  long,  and  many  of  us 
have  already  passed  by  our  youth.  There  are  none  so  young 
but  they  are  making  haste,  swifter  than  an  eagle's  flight,  to- 
ward old  age.  Now,  in  the  wisdom  of  God,  the  way  to  be 
happy  in  old  age  is  the  very  way  of  being  happy  all  our  life. 
It  should  be  borne  in  mind  that  in  old  age  it  is  too  late  to 
mend ;  that  then  you  must  inhabit  what  you  have  built.  Old 
age  has  the  foundation  of  its  joy  or  its  sorrow  laid  in  youth. 
You  are  building  at  twenty.  Are  you  building  for  seventy  ? 
Nay ;  every  stone  laid  m  the  foundation  takes  hold  of  every 
stone  in  the  wall  up  to  the  very  eaves  of  the  building ;  and 
every  deed,  right  or  wrong,  that  transpires  in  youth,  reaches 
forward,  and  has  a  relation  to  all  the  afterpart  of  man's  life. 
A  man's  life  is  not  like  the  contiguous  cells  in  a  bee's  honey- 
comb ;  it  is  more  like  the  separate  parts  of  a  plant  which  un- 
folds out  of  itself,  every  part  bearing  relation  to  all  that  an- 
tecede.  That  which  you  do  in  youth  is  the  root,  and  all  the 
afterparts,  middle  age  and  old  age,  are  the  branches  and  the 
fruits,  whose  character  the  root  will  determine. 

Let  me  consider,  then,  the  physical,  the  secular,  the  social, 
the  intellectual,  and  the  spiritual  elements  of  preparation  for 
old  age. 

1.  There  are  many  physical  elements  which  enter  into  the 
preparation  for  a  profitable  and  happy  old  age.  The  human 
body  is  an  instrument  of  pleasure  and  use,  built  for  eighty 
years'  wear.  Every  man  belongs  to  an  economy  in  which 
he  has  a  right  to  calculate,  or  his  friends  for  him,  on  eighty 
years  as  a  fair  term  of  life.  His  body  is  placed  in  a  world 
adapted  to  nourish  and  protect  it.  Nature  is  congenial. 
There  are  elements  enough  of  mischief  in  it,  if  a  man  pleases 
to  find  them  out.    A  man  can  wear  his  body  out  as  quickly 


Old  Age.  327 

as  he  pleases,  destroy  it  if  he  will ;  but,  after  all,  the  great 
laws  of  Nature  are  nourishing  laws,  and,  comprehensively  re- 
garded, Nature  is  the  universal  nurse,  the  universal  physician 
of  our  race,  guarding  us  against  evil,  warning  us  of  it  by  in- 
cipient pams,  setting  up  signals  of  danger — not  outwardly,  but 
inwardly — and  cautioning  us  by  sorrows  and  by  pains  for  our 
benefit.  Every  immoderate  draft  which  is  made  by  the  ap- 
petites and  passions  is  so  much  sent  forward  to  be  cashed  in 
old  age.  You  may  sin  at  one  end,  but  God  takes  it  off  at  the 
other.  Every  man  has  stored  up  for  him  some  eighty  years, 
if  he  knows  how  to  keep  them,  and  those  eighty  years,  like  a 
bank  of  deposit,  are  full  of  treasures ;  but  youth,  through  ig- 
norance or  through  immoderate  passions,  is  wont  continually 
to  draw  checks  on  old  age.  Men  do  not  suppose  that  they 
are  doing  it,  although  told  that  the  wicked  shall  not  live  out 
half  their  days.  I  need  not  go  far  to  find  illustrations  of  pre- 
mature exhaustion,  or,  at  any  rate,  of  weakness  and  enfeeble- 
ment.  I  might  point  you  to  a  dozen  instances,  without  going 
a  mile  in  any  direction,  of  the  truth  that  unvirtuous  men  shall 
not  live  out  half  of  their  days. 

Men  are  accustomed  to  look  upon  the  excesses  of  youth  as 
something  that  belongs  to  that  time.  They  say  that  of  course 
the  young,  like  colts  unbridled,  will  disjiort  themselves. 
There  is  no  harm  in  colts  disporting  themselves,  but  a  colt 
never  gets  drunk.  I  do  not  object  to  any  amount  of  gayety 
or  vivacity  that  lies  within  the  bounds  of  reason  or  of  health, 
but  I  do  reject  and  abhor,  as  worthy  to  be  stigmatized  as  dis- 
honorable and  unmanly,  every  such  course  in  youth  as  takes 
away  strength,  vigor,  and  purity  from  old  age.  I  do  not  be- 
lieve that  any  man  should  take  the  candle  of  his  old  age  and 
light  it  by  the  vices  of  his  youth.  Every  man  that  transcends 
Nature's  laws  in  youth  is  taking  beforehand  those  treasures 
that  are  stored  up  for  his  old  age ;  he  is  taking  the  food  that 
should  have  been  his  sustenance  in  old  age,  and  exhausting  it 
in  riotous  living  in  his  youth.  Mere  gayety  and  exhilaration 
are  wholesome ;  they  violate  no  law,  moral  or  physical.     I 


S28  Old  Age. 

think  a  man  is  not  a  thorough  Christian  who  is  not  a  cheer- 
ful, happy,  buoyant  Christian.  Tliere  may  be  times  of  pub- 
lic soiTOW,  and  there  may  be  times  of  religious  revivals,  when 
sterner  stuff  is  required ;  when  Christian  men  have  duties  to 
perform  that  bring  into  activity  only  the  sterner  elements  of 
their  character ;  but  these  are  exceptional  cases.  The  ideal 
of  a  Christian  manhood  is  one  of  cheerfulness,  happiness,  hope- 
fulness— a  manhood  full  of  beauty,  of  serenity. 

I  do  not  object,  therefore,  to  mirth  or  gayety,  but  I  do  ob- 
ject to  any  man's  making  an  animal  of  himself  by  living  for 
the  gratification  of  his  own  animal  passions.  People  frequent- 
ly think  that  to  require,  in  the  conduct  of  youth,  that  which 
we  expect  in  later  life,  has  something  of  puritanism  in  it. 
Men  have  an  impression  that  youth  is  very  much  like  wine, 
crude  and  insipid  until  it  has  fermented ;  but  when  it  has  fer- 
mented, and  throwTi  down  the  lees,  and  the  scum  has  been 
drawn  off,  the  great  body  between  is  sound,  and  wholesome, 
and  beautiful.  I  am  not  one  that  thinks  so.  I  thuak  that 
youth  is  the  beginning  of  the  j^lant  life,  and  that  every  wart 
or  excrescence  is  so  much  enfeeblement  of  its  fruit-bearmg 
power.  I  do  not  believe  that  any  man  is  the  better  for  hav- 
ing learned  the  whole  career  of  drunkenness  or  of  lust,  or  the 
dallyings  or  indulgences  that  belong  to  a  morbid  life.  A 
young  man  that  has  gone  through  these  things  may  be  saved 
at  last,  but  in  after  life  he  has  not  the  sensibility,  nor  the  pu- 
rity, nor  the  moral  stamina  that  he  ought  to  have.  He  has 
gone  through  an  experience  but  for  which  his  manhood  would 
have  been  both  stronger  and  noblei*.  I  thoroughly  disbelieve 
that  a  man  is  any  better  for  having,  in  his  youth,  passed 
through  an  experience  that  developed  his  animal  nature  and 
his  lustful  appetites.  Excess  in  youth,  in  regard  to  animal 
indulgences,  is  bankruptcy  in  old  age. 

For  this  reason,  I  deprecate  late  hours,  irregular  hours,  or 
irregular  sleep.  People  ask  me  frequently, "  Do  you  think 
that  there  is  any  harm  in  dancing  ?"  No,  I  do  not.  There  is 
much  good  in  it.    "  Do  you,  then,  object  to  dancing  parties  ?" 


Old  Age.  329 

No ;  in  themselves,  I  do  not.  But  where  unknit  youth,  un- 
ripe muscle,  unsettled  and  unhardened  nerves  are  put  thi'ough 
an  excess  of  excitement,  treated  with  stimulants,  fed  irregu- 
larly and  Avith  unwholesome  food,  surrounded  with  gayety 
which  is  excessive,  and  which  is  protracted  through  hours 
when  they  should  be  asleep,  I  object,  not  because  of  the 
dancing,  but  because  of  the  dissipation.  It  is  taking  the  time 
that  unquestionably  was  intended  for  sleep,  and  spending  it 
in  the  highest  state  of  exhilaration  and  excitement.  The 
harm  is  not  in  the  dancing  itself;  for  if  they  danced  as  do 
the  peasants,  in  the  open  aii',  upon  the  grass  under  the  trees, 
and  in  the  day,  it  might  be  commended,  not  as  virtuous,  but 
still  as  belonging  to  those  negative  things  that  may  be  beau- 
tiful. But  the  w^assail  in  the  night,  the  wastefulness — I  will 
not  say  of  precious  hours,  for  hours  are  not  half  so  precious 
as  nerves  are — the  dissipation,  continued  night  after  night, 
and  week  after  week  through  the  whole  season,  it  is  this  that 
I  deprecate  as  eating  out  the  very  life.  Blessed  be  God  for 
Lent !  I  am  not  superstitious  of  observances,  but  I  am  al- 
ways thankful  that  there  are  forty  days  in  the  year  Avhen 
folks  can  rest  from  their  debauches  and  dissipations ;  when 
no  round  of  excessive  excitement  in  the  pursuit  of  pleasure 
is  permitted  to  come  in,  and  ruin  the  health  and  cripple  the 
natural  powers  of  the  young. 

Irregularity  of  diet  also  has  its  ill  effects.  It  is  not  the 
mere  question  of  digestion  or  of  indigestion,  of  good  spirits 
or  of  bad  spirits  to-day;  irregular  habits  in  regard  to  eat- 
ing and  drinking  reach  forward,  and  take  hold  of  old  age. 
Children  ought  to  be  taught,  and  parents  ought  to  know 
enough  to  teach  them,  these  things.  Ignorance  of  the  struc- 
ture of  our  bodies  may  not  have  been  culpable  fifty  years 
ago,  but,  in  the  light  of  advancing  knowledge,  I  hold  that 
no  Christian  parent  can  but  be  accountable  to  God  for  ig- 
norance of  the  fundamental  laws  of  health.  When  I  am 
king,  none  shall  be  married  until  they  have  passed  through 
the  catechism  of  natural  health,  and  showm  that  they  under- 


830  Old  Age. 

stand  the  fundamental  principles  of  it.  The  appetites  of 
youth,  which,  either  in  social  or  in  solitary  life,  drain  down  the 
vitality  and  impair  the  constitution,  are  so  many  msidious  as- 
saults on  old  age.  I  would  that  the  young  knew  how  clear- 
ly these  things  are  written.  God's  handwriting  is  very  plain 
and  very  legible  to  those  who  have  eyes  to  see.  There  is 
not  an  intelligent  physician  that  does  not  read,  as  he  walks 
through  the  street,  the  secret  history  of  the  lives  of  those 
whom  he  meets,  and  that,  too,  without  following  them  in  their 
midnight  career.  I  care  not  to  have  men  come  to  me  and 
state  their  secret  courses ;  I  can  read  it  in  the  skin  and  in  the 
eye.  There  is  not  one  single  appetite  or  passion  that  has  not 
its  natural  language,  and  every  undue  indulgence  of  that  ap- 
petite or  passion  leaves  that  natural  language  more  or  less 
stamped  upon  the  skin,  upon  the  features,  upon  the  expres- 
sion of  the  face,  or  the  carriage  of  the  body.  There  is  always 
some  token  that  tells  what  men  are  doing,  if  they  are  doing 
any  thing  to  excess.  Pride  has  its  natural  language ;  mirth- 
fulness  has ;  goodness  has.  Nobody  doubts  this.  So  have 
the  passions  their  natural  language.  Men  think  that  if  they 
commit  their  wickedness  in  secret  places,  or  in  the  night,  that 
it  is  not  known.  It  is  known,  although  no  man  may  ever  say 
to  them, "  Thou  art  guilty !" 

The  use  of  stimulants  in  youth  is  another  detraction  from 
happiness  in  old  age.  Men  usually  take  what  they  least  need. 
In  other  words,  we  follow  our  strongest  faculties,  and  not  our 
weaker  ones ;  and  therefore,  if  men  are  excessively  nervous, 
they  almost  invariably  seek  to  make  themselves  more  so. 
Men  that  need  the  most  soothing,  the  most  quiet,  drive  them- 
selves by  the  use  of  the  most  excessive  stimulants.  There 
will  come  a  time,  however,  when  men  will  be  proud  of  being 
wholesome,  clean,  and  natural. 

Among  some  dangers  and  mischiefs  flowing  from  the  high 
development  of  material  science,  I  look  upon  one  tendency  as 
beneficent:  I  think  that  there  is  a  growing  approximation 
toward  a  higher  ideal  of  physical  manhood ;  and  I  believe 


Old  Age.  331 

that  there  will  come  a  time  when  a  man  would  just  as  soon 
break  a  limb  under  the  impression  that  when  it  is  set  crooked 
he  would  be  handsomer,  as  to  indulge  in  dissipation,  or  in  ir- 
regularities of  any  kind,  that  tend  to  disease  or  impair  his  nat- 
ural powers.  I  believe  that  man  will  then  have  just  as  much 
fear  of  all  courses  of  life  that  carry  with  them  unhealth,  as 
now  he  has  of  maiming,  or  wounds,  or  tortures.  When  that 
day  comes,  I  think  that  there  will  be  a  general  banishment  of 
alcoholic  drinks,  and  a  total  exclusion  of  tobacco ;  indulgence 
in  which,  beginning  early,  is,  with  very  few  exceptions,  waste- 
ful all  the  way  through  life. 

I  rejoice  to  say  that  I  was  brought  up  from  my  youth  to 
abstain  from  tobacco.  It  is  unhealthy ;  it  is  filthy  from  be- 
ginning to  end.  In  rare  cases,  where  there  is  already  some 
unhealthy  or  morbid  tendency  in  the  system,  it  is  possible 
that  it  may  be  used  with  some  benefit,  but  ordinarily  it  is  un- 
healthy. I  believe  that  the  day  will  come  when  a  young  man 
will  be  proud  of  not  being  addicted  to  the  use  of  stimulants 
of  any  kind.  I  believe  that  the  day  will  come  when  not  to 
drink,  not  to  use  tobacco,  not  to  waste  one's  strength  in  the 
secret  indulgence  of  passion,  but  to  be  true  to  one's  nature, 
true  to  God's  law,  to  be  round,  robust,  cheerful,  and  to  be 
conscious  that  these  elements  of  health  and  strength  are  de- 
rived from  the  reverent  obedience  of  the  commandments  of 
God,  will  be  a  matter  of  ambition  and  endeavor  among  men. 

But  there  are  many  that  I  perceive  are  wasting  their  lives 
and  destroying  their  old  age,  not  through  their  passions,  but 
through  their  ambition,  and  in  the  pursuit  of  laudable  ob- 
jects. I  know  of  many  artists  that  are  wearing  out  their  lives, 
day  after  day,  with  preternatural  excitement  of  the  brain ; 
yet  their  aims  are  transcendently  excellent.  I  know  of  mu- 
sicians that  are  wearing  out,  night  and  day;  yet  their  ambition 
is  upward  and  noble.  They  are  ignorant  that  they  are  wear- 
ing out  their  body  by  the  excitement  of  their  brains.  While 
alcoholic  stimulants  waste  and  destroy  life,  and  prevent  a 
happy  old  age,  the  same  thing  is  also  done  by  moral  stimu- 


882  Old  Age. 

lants.  The  latter  is  not  as  beastly,  but  it  is  just  as  wasteful 
of  health.  Whatever  prematurely  wears  out  the  thinking 
machinery,  or  destroys  health  jjrematurely,  carries  bankrupt- 
cy into  old  age. 

How  much  a  man  may  do,  therefore,  depends  upon  the  cap- 
ital that  God  has  given  him.  Many  begin  life  with  a  small 
stock  of  health ;  they  are  to  augment  it.  Many  begm  life,  as 
do  the  children  of  rich  men,  with  abundant  capital  and  ma- 
terial ;  they  are  to  guard  it  and  take  care  of  it.  In  either 
case,  health,  and  the  suitable  conduct  of  the  economy  of  the 
body,  should  be  taught  by  every  parent,  and  more  and  more 
by  the  pulpit. 

Many  men  are  struck  down  in  the  day  of  battle;  they  die 
nobly.  Many  men  die  before  their  prime,  because  the  sins 
of  their  fathers  are  expiated  in  them ;  they  perish  as  victims 
at  a  sacrifice.  But  there  are  a  great  many  men  that  use  their 
lives  as  yoiT  would  use  a  candle — by  putting  three  wicks,  in- 
stead of  one,  m  the  same  amount  of  wax,  and  then  burnmg  it 
out  with  a  threefold  flame.  It  is  not  long  before  the  candle 
is  burned  to  the  socket.  A  true  man  should  live  all  the  way 
through  his  threescore  years  and  ten,  and  then  expire,  not 
like  a  stenchful  wick  in  an  obscure  socket.  He  should  keep 
time  like  a  clock,  that  goes  on  through  the  whole  twenty- 
four  hours,  and  until  the  very  last  beat :  and  when  at  last  the 
weight  touches  the  floor,  there  is  no  explosion ;  there  is  no 
disruption;  the  pointers  are  there;  the  dial  still  shows  its 
fair  face ;  every  wheel  is  still  in  its  place ;  the  clock  has  sim- 
ply run  down,  and  silently,  quietly,  it  stops.  All  the  fair 
fi-amework  is  left  just  as  it  Avas,  Such  should  death  in  old 
age  be — only  that  the  soul  ceases  to  keep  time  here,  that  it 
may  begin  to  keep  time  where  there  is  no  running  down,  and 
where  eternity  shall  be  marked  by  hours  of  joy  and  minutes 
of  pleasure  forever  and  ever. 

2.  There  ought,  also,  to  be  wisdom  in  secular  afiairs,  in  the 
preparation  by  the  young  for  the  coming  of  old  age. 

Foresight  is  a  Christian  virtue.     There  are  many  persons 


Old  Age.  333 

who  think  that  vre  are  to  depend  upon  Providence,  and  not 
upon  foresight.  There  are  some  who  even  think  that  we 
ought  not  to  insure  ourselves,  but  that  we  ought,  instead,  to 
■  depend  upon  Providence.  Are  we,  then,  to  depend  upon 
Providence  for  next  year's  crop,  and  not  sow  the  seed  ?  Am 
I  to  dej)end  upon  Providence  to  hang  umbrellas  over  my  head 
whenever  it  rains,  instead  of  building  a  roof  to  shelter  me  ? 
Should  you  not  rather  say  that  he  who  makes  a  wise  provision 
for  future  contingencies  is  acting  in  obedience  to  God's  law  ? 
Every  man  should  make  such  provision  for  himself  as  that  he 
shall  not  be  dependent  upon  others.  Provision  for  moderate 
comfort  in  old  age  is  wise.  It  is  far  better  than  an  ambition 
for  immoderate  riches,  which  too  often  defeats  itself  If  men 
were  more  moderate  in  their  expectations ;  if,  when  they  had 
obtained  a  reasonable  competency,  they  secured  that  from  the 
perils  of  commercial  reverses,  more  men,  I  think,  would  go 
into  old  age  serene  and  happy. 

But  many  men  make  money,  not  that  they  may  enjoy  it,  but 
that  they  may  enjoy  the  ambition  of  having  more  money  than 
other  people.  They  do  not  measure  property  by  its  relation  to 
its  use,  but  by  its  relation  to  their  pride  and  to  their  ambition. 
The  consequence  is,  that  when  the  storm  descends  upon  them 
many  a  gallant  ship  goes  down.  In  nine  cases  out  of  ten,  im- 
moderation is  the  father  of  bankruptcy.  It  is  the  part  of  wis- 
dom to  secure,  in  youth  and  in  manhood,  a  competency  that 
shall  keep  old  age  from  want.  One  of  the  conditions  of  true 
manliness  is  that  a  man  shall  not  be  dependent  upon  any- 
body but  himself  I  think  it  would  be  better  that  the  father 
should  not  be  dependent  upon  his  children  at  any  period  of 
his  life. 

There  is  something  beautiful,  I  know,  in  the  thought  of  a 
parent  leaning  on  the  shoulders  of  those  whom  he  has  reared. 
Nevertheless,  there  is  something  more  beautiful  in  the  thought 
of  a  man  leaning  upon  his  own  staff.  In  youth  you  are  cut- 
ting the  staff  that  you  are  to  lean  upon  in  old  age.  There  is 
a  reason,  therefore,  for  frugality  and  moderation  in  expense, 


334  Old  Age. 

that  reaches  as  far  out  as  your  life  is  long,  and  that  will  seem 
to  you  more  and  more  apparent  as  you  grow  older. 

3.  In  looking  upon  old  age,  we  are  forcibly  struck  with  the 
necessity  of  taking  pains  early,  and  all  the  way  through  life, 
to  accumulate  stores  for  social  enjoyment.  Sociability  is  a 
part  of  Christian  duty.  He  that  derives  enjoyment  from 
himself  alone,  that  seeks  to  exclude  himself  from  society,  or  to 
shut  himself  up  with  a  class,  or  with  a  few  families  in  a  class, 
or  with  a  few  persons  in  a  family,  of  his  own  age,  taste,  and 
pursuits,  is  leading  a  narrow,  circumscribed  life.  If  all  your 
life  long  you  derive  pleasure  from  only  one  or  two  rounds ; 
if  you  teach  yourself  to  enjoy  one  or  two  things ;  if,  of  all  that 
swarm  around  you  in  human  life,  you  derive  satisfaction  only 
from  the  society  of  a  chosen  few ;  if  you  are  happy  only  with 
those  who  reflect  you  in  some  way,  how  greatly  will  you  feel 
the  need  of  social  pleasure  in  old  age !  A  man  ought  to  so 
train  himself  that  there  shall  not  be  a  human  being  about  him 
out  of  whom  he  can  not  extract  both  profit  and  enjoyment 
The  tendency  toward  brotherhood,  the  holding  of  all  men  as 
though  they  were  akin  to  you,  the  habit  of  deriving  satis- 
faction from  all  classes  of  society,  have  relations  not  only 
to  your  usefulness  and  influence,  but  also  to  your  old  age. 
If  a  man,  in  old  age,  can  go  dovra  to  the  great  ocean  of 
human  society,  and,  casting  his  line  there,  bring  to  land  every 
fish  with  a  piece  of  money  in  its  mouth,  how  happy  is  he ! 
There  are  many  old  men  who  are  happy  at  home ;  if  they  take 
the  stafi"  and  walk  into  the  street,  all  the  children  make  them 
happy,  and  all  the  neighbors,  men  of  low  as  well  as  of  high 
degree,  furnish  them  with  pleasure.  Every  man  should  take 
great  care  not  to  cut  himself  ofi"  from  the  sympathies  of  hu- 
man life.  Old  men  should  take  care  that  they  be  not  deprived 
of  enjoyment  in  the  society  of  the  young ;  and  if  a  man  would 
derive  comfort  from  the  young  in  his  old  age,  he  must  culti- 
vate an  attachment  for  the  young  in  his  early  life.  In  youth 
and  middle  age  you  are  to  secure  the  provision  that  shall  sup- 
ply you  in  old  age,  if  you  are  to  be  nourished  and  made  hap- 
py on  such  joys  as  these. 


Old  Age.  335 

Be  not,  then,  selfish  in  your  youth.  You  will  be  punished 
in  old  age  if  you  are.  Enlarge  your  social  sympathies.  Grow 
to  your  fellow-men,  instead  of  growing  away  from  them,  and 
strive  to  live  more  and  more  in  sympathy  with  them  and  for 
them. 

4.  Let  me  speak  a  few  words  of  the  intellectual  resources 
that  are  to  help  you  in  old  age. 

Too  often  the  intellect  is  merely  considered  as  a  tool.  A  man 
is  too  often  educated  merely  with  reference  to  gaining  his  liv- 
ing in  the  future.  To  such  an  extent  is  this  idea  prevalent, 
that  if  a  man  is  to  be  a  mechanic,  or  a  farmer,  and  has  pursued  a 
liberal  education,  people  sneer  at  him,  and  ask,  "  Why  do  you 
throw  away  so  many  precious  years  in  educating  a  man  who 
is  not  to  be  any  thing,  after  all,  but  a  mechanic  or  a  laborer  ?" 
Or,  if  a  man  has  gone  through  college,  and  has  educated  him- 
self for  a  chemist,  and  then  goes  into  a  machine  shop,  peoi^le 
say,  "  Wliy,  what  a  prostitution  of  time  that  was !  He  has 
gone  through  a  whole  curriculum  of  learning  only  to  bury 
himself  in  a  shop."  Education  has  a  more  important  relation 
to  manhood  than  it  has  to  the  making  of  your  outside  fortune. 
If  you  are  to  be  a  lawyer,  a  physician,  a  minister,  or  a  teacher, 
you  need  an  education  in  order  to  succeed  in  your  calling ; 
but  if  you  belong  to  none  of  these  callings,  you  need  an  edu- 
cation to  succeed  in  your  manhood.  Education  means  the 
development  of  what  is  in  man ;  and  every  man  ought  to  be 
developed,  not  because  he  can  make  money  thereby,  but  be- 
cause he  can  make  manhood  thereby.  Education  is  due  to 
your  manhood.  Every  child  should  be  educated,  no  matter 
what  his  business  is  to  be.  Of  those  who  have  not  received 
a  liberal  professional  education,  there  is  not  one  young  man 
in  a  million,  in  this  country  (where  there  is  so  much  of  work, 
and  consequently  so  much  of  leisure),  who  has  a  fair  start, 
that  has  not  time  enough,  and  means  enough,  and  opportuni- 
ties enough,  to  get  a  i*ational  education.  In  that  you  are  to 
have  a  refuge  in  old  age.  It  is  a  piteous  thing  when  a  man 
becomes  old,  and  can  no  longer  plead  at  the  bar,  who  has  tak- 


336  Old  Age. 

en  all  his  excitement  there  through  life ;  nor  practice  medi- 
cine, who  has  taken  all  his  excitement  in  that  through  life ; 
and,  on  being  shut  out  from  his  usual  employments,  has  noth- 
ing to  do.  He  does  not  read  books ;  he  takes  no  more  in- 
terest in  them.  He  does  not  like  newspapers ;  they  do  not 
concern  him.  Little  by  little  the  light  of  reason  retreats,  and 
he  stands  in  old  age  like  a  light-house  with  the  lamp  gone 
out.  Keep  your  lamp  full  of  oil,  and  lay  up  such  stores  of  in- 
tellectual provision,  that,  when  you  go  into  old  age,  if  one  re- 
source fails  you,  you  can  try  another.  If  you  have  learned  to 
look  under  your  feet  every  day  while  young,  and  to  cull  the 
treasures  of  truth  w^hicli  belong  to  geology,  natural  history, 
and  chemistry ;  if  every  fly  has  furnished  you  a  study ;  if  the 
incrustation  of  the  frost  is  a  matter  of  interest ;  if  the'trees  that 
come  in  spring,  and  the  birds  that  populate  them,  the  flowers 
of  the  meadow,  the  grass  of  the  field,  the  fishes  that  disjDort 
themselves  in  the  water — if  all  of  these  are  to  you  so  many 
souvenirs  of  the  working  hand  of  your  God,  you  vnll  find,  when 
you  come  into  old  age,  that  you  have  great  stores  of  enjoy- 
ment therein.  Let  me,  therefore,  recommend  you  to  commit 
much  to  memory.  When  a  man  is  blind,  his  memory  is  not 
blind.  I  have  seen  many  a  man  who  in  youth  had  commit- 
ted much  to  memory  from  the  Scriptures,  and  hymns  and 
poems,  who  was  able,  in  old  age,  to  recall  and  recite  what  he 
had  learned,  and  to  fall  back  upon  those  treasures,  his  own 
head  having  thiis  become  to  him  a  library.  Oh,  how  much  a 
man  may  store  up  against  old  age !  What  a  price  is  put 
into  the  hands  of  the  young  whereT\ath  to  get  wisdom !  Wliat 
provisions  for  old  age  do  they  squander  and  throw  away !  It 
is  not  merely  that  you  may  be  keen  and  strong  now ;  it  is  not 
for  the  poor  ambition  of  being  esteemed  learned  that  I  urge 
you  now  to  lay  such  treasures  up ;  but  because  it  is  just,  and 
right,  and  noble  that  you  should  be  intelligent,  and  because 
your  whole  life  is  interested  in  it,  and  your  old  age  pre-emi- 
nently so. 

There  is  many  an  old  philosopher,  like  Franklin,  whose  last 


Old  Age.  837 

hours  Tire  so  serene,  and  sweet,  and  beautiful  as  to  almost 
make  one  wish  to  exchange  youth  for  old  age.  Man  should 
stand  in  the  horizon  of  life  as  sometimes,  in  summer,  we  see 
the  sun  stand,  as  if  it  had  forgotten  to  move ;  lying  so  in  va- 
por that  it  is  shorn  of  its  excessive  brightness — large,  round, 
red — looking  as  if  it  waited  to  cast  back  one  more  love-glance 
on  the  earth.  So  have  I  seen  the  aged  linger ;  so  round,  and 
rich,  and  bright,  and  beautiful,  as  to  make  youth  seem  poor  in 
treasure  when  compared  with  old  age.  It  is  a  great  thing  so 
to  have  lived  that  the  best  part  of  life  shall  be  its  evening. 
October,  the  ripest  month  of  the  year,  and  the  richest  in  colors, 
is  a  type  of  what  old  age  should  be. 

5.  I  have  reserved  for  the  last  the  most  important,  namely, 
the  spiritual,  preparation  for  old  age.  It  is  a  beautiful  thing 
for  a  man,  when 'he  comes  into  old  age,  to  have  no  more  prep- 
aration to  make.  It  is  far  better  than  nothing  for  a  man 
who  has  gone  through  the  hurry  of  life,  who  has  tasted  its 
disappointments,  sounded  its  depths,  and  exhausted  its  re- 
sources, to  spend  his  last  years  in  preparing  for  the  other  life 
— that  is  far  better  than  nothing;  but  a  man's  whole  life 
should  be  a  preparation  for  dying ;  and  when  a  man  comes 
into  old  age,  he  should  have  less  preparation  to  make  than  at 
any  other  period  of  his  life.  Your  thoughts  should  commence 
with  heaven;  your  hopes  should  point  you  to  those  higher 
and  nobler  enjoyments  that  are  in  store ;  you  should  so  live 
that  when  you  come  into  old  age  you  will  not  have  to  begin 
a  new  and  untried  way ;  you  should  not  then  have  a  piety 
that  fits  you  like  a  boughten  garment,  not  measured  to  your 
form.  If  piety  is  the  garment  you  have  worn  through  a  long 
and  virtuous  life,  you  may  stand  in  your  old  age  in  the  cer- 
tainty of  faith,  waiting  only  that  you  may  pass  from  glory  to 
glory. 

A  part  of  this  spiritual  preparation  consists,  I  think,  in  liv- 
ing all  the  time  with  the  distinct  consciousness  that  our  life 
is  a  joined  one;  that  the  best  part  of  it  is  that  which  lies  be- 
yond ;  and  that  we  are  not  to  live  for  the  life  that  lies  between 

n.— Y 


338  Old  Age. 

one  and  eighty,  but  for  that  which  lies  between  one  and  eter- 
nity. The  habit  of  associating  all  your  friends  and  friendships 
with  this  future  life,  while  it  will  afford  you  great  comfort 
and  strength  all  the  way  through  life,  will  give  its  choicest 
fruits  and  benefits  in  old  age.  As  you  grow  old,  childhood's 
companions  die  around  you  every  year;  but  if  you  have  been 
living  a  true  Christian  life,  although  the  world  may  seem  des- 
olate for  a  time,  yet  your  thought  is  this :  "  My  companions, 
my  fellow-workers,  have  gone  before  me ;  I  am  left  alone  in 
the  dreary  world,  but  am  every  day  being  brought  closer 
and  closer  to  that  world  of  everlasting  blessedness.  One 
has  gone  before ;  another  has  gone ;  the  wife  of  my  bosom, 
my  eldest  child,  one  after  another  of  my  children,  and  of 
their  children,  have  gone ;  one  after  another  of  my  neighbors 
and  the  friends  of  my  youth  have  gone,  and  I  am  left  behind ; 
but  I  am  close  upon  their  steps.  They  are  all  there  waiting 
for  me.  I  have  but  a  few  days  to  wait,  and  I  shall  be  blessed 
again  with  their  high  and  holy  society." 

How  desolate  must  old  age  be  to  the  man  who  has  no  heav- 
en beyond ;  who  stands  trembling  with  infirmities,  declined 
in  eai',  and  eye,  and  tongue ;  his  hand  palsied,  his  memory 
gone — looking  back  across  the  dreary  stretch  of  life  that  he 
has  just  passed  over,  and  forward  wath  fear  to  the  life  of 
which  he  thought  so  little  !  How  glorious  for  an  old  man  to 
stand,  as  Moses  stood,  upon  the  top  of  the  mount,  looking 
across  the  Jordan  into  the  jn-omised  land,  and  viewing  the  fair 
possessions  that  awaited  him !  Moses  died,  and  did  not  go 
over ;  but  the  old  man  shall  die,  and  go  over,  and  shall  find  it 
in  that  day  a  land  rich,  beautiful,  and  glorious. 

If  you  would  come  into  old  age  with  these  transcendent 
hopes,  begin  the  work  of  preparation  early.  Live  rightly 
all  the  way  through.  Do  not  think  that  if  you  live  as  you 
please  now,  you  can  live  as  you  please  then.  Live  now  as  you 
want  to  live  in  old  age.  Lay  such  walls  on  such  foundations, 
and  of  such  materials,  as  will  support  you ;  and  then,  when 
heart  and  flesh  shall  fail,  it  will  only  be  because  God  thus 


Old  Age.  839 

breaks  open  tlie  tenement  that  he  may  let  out  the  si^irit,  to 
enter  into  that  high  and  serene  existence  where  there  shall  be 
everlasting  youth,  and  where  everlasting  blessedness  awaits 
you. 

At  times,  in  preaching,  a  man's  thoughts  run  upon  bring- 
ing people  into  the  kingdom ;  he  has  what  are  called  revival 
thoughts  and  sympathies.  I  see  men  going  blmdly  and  heed- 
lessly their  own  ways,  and  I  am  seized  with  an  intense  ardor 
and  desire  to  bring  them  into  a  Christian  life.  At  other  times 
the  minister  thinks  not  so  much  of  bringing  men  into  the 
kingdom  as  of  making  more  glorious  those  that  are  in.  Do 
you  not  know  that  ten  thousand  veterans,  well  disciplined, 
are  worth  more  than  a  hundred  thousand  scattering  militia? 
The  power  is  not  in  numbers,  but  in  drill.  Now,  if  all  Brook- 
lyn were  brought  within  the  Cliurch,  and  the  being  "  brought 
in"  here  did  not  mean  much,  Brooklyn  would  gain  but  little ; 
but  if  the  hundreds  that  are  brought  within  the  Church  were 
thereby  incited  to  a  higher  manhood,  to  better  habits,  to  no- 
bler aspirations,  to  a  larger  conception  of  life,  to  a  serener  age ; 
if  the  followers  of  the  Lord  Jesus  Christ  stood  conspicuous 
among  men  for  their  princeliness,  for  their  innocent  enjoy- 
ment of  the  world,  for  the  power  that  they  wield  when  they 
walk  through  dark  and  dangerous  places ;  if  they  were  vic- 
tors where  other  men  were  defeated ;  if  they  stood  upright 
where  other  men  fell,  through  temptation ;  if  they  were  ra- 
diant when  other  men  were  dark-browed ;  if  they  were  full 
of  God,  full  of  hope,  full  of  heaven,  and  these  were  the  fruits 
of  the  Gospel  among  them,  would  it  not  be  worth  more  to 
have  a  thousand  such  recruits  than  fifty  thousand  militia 
Christians  ?  What  we  want  is  better  men,  more  heroic  men 
— men  that  shall  illustrate  what  is  possible  by  the  application 
of  the  truths  of  Christ,  and  by  the  ^^se  obedience  of  the  laws 
of  God  and  nature  (for  Christianity  includes  nature ;  it  appro- 
priates all  that  is  in  it,  and  gives  it  a  higher  direction) — men 
that  are  bottomed  on  nature  and  nourished  on  Christianity,  as 
plants  grow  upon  the  earth  and  drink  in  life  from  the  sun. 


340  Old  Age. 

Men  that  are  thus  cultured  are  worth  more  than  all  the  su- 
perficial efiects  of  an  exciting  religion. 

We  want  manhood. 

I  should  be  proud  to  have  it  said  that  they  that  came  into 
the  Church  here  began  straightway  to  make  their  profiting 
apparent  in  their  higher  manhood,  in  their  dignity  of  charac- 
ter, in  their  fruitfulness,  and  in  the  sweetness  of  their  lives. 

God  grant,  my  dear  young  friends,  that  for  the  life  which 
is  opening  before  you,  you  may  have  instructions  that  we  who 
are  older  had  not,  and  be  inspired  by  an  ambition  that  was 
scarcely  possible  with  us. 

I  do  not  want  to  live  my  life  over  again,  but  I  rejoice  that 
you  are  entering  upon  a  more  glorious  career  than  I  could 
have  done.  Use  your  opportunities;  do  not  waste  them. 
God  has  given  you  privileges  such  as  were  never  revealed  to 
any  generation  before ;  be,  then,  noble  men ;  be  kingly  men ; 
show  to  your  own  generation  what  is  the  power  of  true  relig- 
ion and  of  true  Christianity  in  you. 

I  speak  unto  you,  young  men,  because  you  are  strong.  I 
speak  unto  you,  maidens,  because  you  are  mse  and  virtuous. 
I  call  you  to  faith  in  Christ  as  the  inspiration,  as  the  begin- 
ning only.     I  call  you  to  womanhood  and  to  manhood. 

Dear  brethren,  we  are  the  sons  of  God ;  we  can  not  afiibrd 
to  be  lost.  We  are  the  sons  of  God ;  we  can  not  afibrd  to  be 
unhappy.  We  are  the  sons  of  God ;  we  can  not  afibrd  to  keep 
bad  company.  We  are  the  sons  of  God;  we  can  not  afibrd 
to  be  tied  down  by  appetite,  or  with  considerations  of  what 
we  shall  eat,  or  drink,  or  wherewithal  we  shall  be  clothed. 
We  are  the  sons  of  God ;  but  it  doth  not  yet  appear  what  we 
shall  be. 


PEAYER. 

Thee  we  adore,  thou  holy,  sacred,  infinite,  everlasting  God! 
In  thine  ineflable  light  we  can  not  stand.  We,  whose  iiatures 
are  impure,  could  not  bear  the  weight  of  the  revelation  of 
eternal  glory.     But  near  to  thee  are  principalities  and  powers. 


Old  Age.  8-il 

and  near  to  thee  are  saints  inured  to  heaven,  and  tempered  to 
all  its  brightness.  The  great  congregation  of  the  ages  past 
to-day  hymns  thy  praise.  Aromid  about  thee  are  those  -with 
whom,  in  sweet  and  blessed  fellowship,  thou  hast  walked  for 
centuries.  Thou  hast  taken  fear  from  them,  and  sorrow  has 
not  known  them  for  many  a  rolling  year.  Thou  hast  released 
them  from  the  strife  of  mortal  life.  The  bitterness  of  death, 
the  grief  of  trouble,  the  sting  of  sin,  and  the  i3eril  of  the  law, 
are  past.  Into  thy  blessed  fellowship  have  risen  many  from 
out  of  our  households,  from  our  sides  in  the  church,  and  from 
about  us  in  the  midst  of  the  community,  and  the  voices 
that  brought  cheer  and  aifection  to  us  are  now  lifting  them- 
selves up  in  sacred  songs  in  thy  presence.  Who  can  enter 
in,  by  thought  or  imagination,  to  conceive  of  the  royalty 
of  that  realm  of  delight  where  thou  standest  as  Host  and 
eternal  Entertainer,  and  where  all  about  thee  are  thy  guests 
— kings  and  priests  unto  God?  We  rejoice  that  it  is  high- 
er than  our  thoughts.  We  gather  together  the  things  that 
men  call  most  delightsome ;  we  select  from  the  symijathies 
of  the  world,  and  from  our  experiences,  the  chiefest  things ; 
and  yet  we  hear  thee  saying,  "  It  doth  not  yet  appear  what 
we  shall  be."  Not  when  we  have  come  to  the  utmost  bound 
of  reason,  to  the  extreme  verge  of  the  imagination,  is  it  pos- 
sible for  us  to  conceive  what  God  hath  laid  up  for  them 
that  serve  him.  We  are  willing  to  wait.  We  do  not  seek 
to  know  beyond  our  time,  or  before  it.  We  accept  now  the 
journey,  and  then  we  will  accept  our  Father's  house  when  we 
shall  have  reached  it.  But  we  thank  thee  that  there  are  these 
fore-gleams  and  tokens  by  the  way  to  cheer  us,  and  to  lift  us 
out  of  despondency.  We  have  the  certainty  of  God's  great 
goodness.  Gracious  art  thou  beyond  our  power  to  think. 
Thy  thoughts  are  higher  than  our  thoughts — as  mxich  higher 
as  the  heavens  are  than  the  earth.  We  can  not  enter  into  the 
conception  of  the  grandeur  of  thy  justice,  and  of  that  sense 
of  truth  and  right  which  is  in  thee.  And  who  shall  measure 
what  infinite  love  is  ?  Who  shall  undertake  to  imagme  what 
the  wonder  of  the  evolution  of  thy  loving  is  in  thy  family  ? 
If  we  that  are  but  just  begim,  and  have  not  learned  the  roy- 
alties of  love,  know  how  to  fill  our  homes  with  sweet  and  rare 
delight ;  if  we  look  back  to  our  childhood,  and  to  our  parents, 
and  wonder  at  the  wealth  of  affection  in  250or,  imperfect,  sin- 
ful mortals,  the  creatures  of  a  day,  what  must  thy  divine  love 
be,  thou  that  dwellest  in  eternity  and  from  eternity,  and  hast 
had  all  the  experience  of  ages  ?  It  is  higher  than  we  can 
reach.     The  length  and  the  breadth,  the  height  and  the  depth 


342  Old  Age. 

of  it,  pass  understanding.  But  we  rejoice  to  believe  that  thou 
art  what  thou  art.  So  do  we  interpret  thee,  that  our  hearts 
are  traveling  home  full  of  hope.  The  intimations  that  thou 
givest  us ;  the  yearnings  that  we  feel ;  the  aspirations  that  we 
have,  and  the  unsatisfying  nature  of  the  world — are  not  these 
the  witnesses  of  thy  Spirit  in  us  ?  When  our  souls  go  out 
after  thee,  is  it  not  because  we  have  tokens  of  sonship  ?  In 
our  spontaneous  outcry  for  Father,  do  we  not  recognize  our 
relationship  to  thee  ?  And  sometimes,  when  we  are  lifted  up 
by  secret  and  divine  joys  above  the  power  of  the  world — yea, 
and  above  the  power  of  our  own  hearts  to  do  us  harm ;  when 
we  walk  in  the  high  places  of  the  earth  so  that  nothing  can 
reach  up  to  pluck  us  doAvn  or  hinder  our  grand  career,  then 
have  we  not  in  us  some  intimations  of  that  noble  and  royal 
existence  which  thou  Avilt  grant  to  us  when  life,  and  its  bur- 
dens, its  trials,  and  its  discipline  are  over?  Grant,  we  pray 
thee,  not  that  Ave  may  seek  to  abide  on  the  movuitain-top  in 
indolence  and  in  luxury  of  spiritual  enjoyment,  but  that,  tak- 
ing these  for  the  confirmation  of  our  faith,  and  for  the  strength- 
ening of  our  hands,  we  may  press  right  forward  in  the  way 
of  duty,  returning  to  life  to  bear  sorrow,  and  trouble,  and  care, 
and  vexation,  and  hinderance.  Wliy  should  we  seek  to  be  un- 
crowned with  thorns,  wlio  are  the  followers  of  Him  that  was 
crowned  for  us  ?  And  Avhy  should  we  think  that  the  servant 
is  better  than  the  master,  so  that  he  should  go  free  while  the 
master  suffers  ?  May  we  be  Avilling  to  Avear  the  signs  and 
badges  of  our  discipleship.  Every  clay  may  we  go  with  trou- 
ble and  care  to  Him  AAdio  says, "  Come  unto  me,  all  ye  that  labor 
and  are  heavy  laden,  and  I  Avill  give  you  rest."  So,  bearing 
our  burdens,  may  Ave  lose  them ;  so,  enduring  our  troubles, 
may  Ave  cease  to  feel  them  to  be  troubles.  Thus  may  Ave  go 
through  the  period  of  our  earthly  probation.  And  at  last, 
when  thou  shalt  have  served  our  generation  by  our  poor  and 
perishable  services,  then  may  Ave  knoAV  as  we  are  known,  and 
behold  thee  Avithout  a  glass,  face  to  face. 

Grant,  to-day,  Ave  beseech  thee,  to  every  one  in  thy  pres- 
ence, the  special  grace  that  his  case  needs.  Some  are  children 
of  tears.  O  thou  that  causest  the  clouds  to  send  doAvn  rain, 
that  art  now  searching  out  all  the  roots,  and  that  by  storms 
art  preparing  for  leaves  and  blossoms,  grant  that  those  aa^Iio 
sit  in  tears  may  feel  that  God  is  raining  upon  them,  that  their 
hearts  may  become  the  gardens  of  the  Lord ;  and  grant,  AA^e 
pray  thee,  that  though  for  the  present  their  sufferings  are  not 
joyous,  but  grievous,  afterward  they  may  work  out  in  them 
the  peaceable  fruit  of  righteousness. 


Old  Age.  843 

And  we  beseech  thee  that  thou  mlt  raise  up  for  those  that 
are  alone,  and  that  feel  then-  desolateness,  the  shadowy  and 
sacred  companionship  of  thine  own  presence,  that  they  may 
know  that  they  walk  with  God,  and  that  even  in  the  furnace 
the  form  of  the  fourth  is  walking  near,  so  that  the  fire  shall 
not  harm  them. 

Are  any  in  the  midst  of  temptations  grievously  tempted  ? 
Thou  that  didst  stop  the  mouths  of  lions,  and  delivered  thy 
servant  from  their  power,  canst  thou  not  deliver  such  ?  Suc- 
cor them,  that  they  may  know  that  God  hath  not  forgotten 
them. 

If  there  are  any  that  are  seeking  to  knOw  thee,  and  that, 
like  Mary  of  old,  for  the  multitude  of  their  tears  and  sorrows 
are  not  able  to  discern  the  Christ  that  stands  before  them, 
grant,  we  pray  thee,  that  they  may  hear  thee,  as  she  heard 
thee,  calling  them  by  their  name ;  and  with  joyful  alacrity 
may  they  reach  out  their  hands  and  cry,  "  My  Lord  and  my 
God  !"  Teach  those  that  seek  thee  by  some  tangible  sign  to 
worship  thee  as  a  Spirit.  Teach  those  that  ask  manifestations 
of  God  in  the  tumult  and  mutations  of  an  earthly  exjjerience 
to  love  and  worship  by  faith. 

If  any  are  walking  vdth  but  early  and  feeble  steps  in  the 
right  way,  O  thou  that  didst  draw  near  to  the  little  children, 
and  caress  them,  and  take  them  to  thy  bosom,  and  lay  thy 
hand  upon  their  head,  and  bless  them  with  words  of  love  and 
sympathy,  grant  that  the  young  that  are  beginning  to  follow 
Christ  may  have  the  laying  on  of  thy  hand  and  the  inbreath- 
ing of  thy  blessing. 

Grant  that  parents  may  be  more  and  more  encouraged  to 
rear  their  children  from  the  very  cradle  to  truth,  to  right- 
eousness, to  purity,  to  duty,  to  faith,  to  hope,  to  love,  to  obedi- 
ence toward  God.  And  so  we  beseech  thee  that  this  church 
may  include  in  it  those  better  churches  of  the  Christian 
household,  where  the  father  and  the  mother  are  ordained  of 
God  to  be  priests  to  the  little  children  that  in  faith  follow 
them,  and  in  following  them  follow  God.  We  pray  that  thou 
■^-ilt  bless  the  efibrts  that  are  being  made  to  instruct  those 
whose  parents  do  not  instruct  them — for  some  there  are  that 
love  their  children  for  this  world,  but  love  them  not  for  the 
world  to  come ;  and  we  pray  that  thou  wilt  grant  that  there 
may  be  provided  for  the  children  of  Godless  parents  Christian 
culture. 

Those  that  go  forth  to  labor  among  the  poor;  that  visit 
from  house  to  house,  and  seek  out  the  afliicted ;  that  go  day 
by  day  into  the  streets,  into  jails  and  prisons,  into  all  places 


34-i  Old  Age. 

where  men  resort — O  Lord,  grant  that  they  may  be  clothed 
with  thy  Spirit,  and  that  they  may  hear  the  sweet  and  blessed 
tidings  of  the  Gospel  to  those  that  need  them  so  much  even 
in  this  life ;  and  we  pray  thee  that  they  may  have  a  tliou- 
sand  fold  the  blessings  which  they  confer  bestowed  upon  their 
own  hearts. 

We  beseech  thee  that  thou  wilt  bless  all  for  whom  our 
prayers  should  ascend.  Bless  our  enemies,  if  we  have  them. 
Grant  that  as  thou  dost  forgive  us,  we  may  forgive  them. 

Grant  a  blessing  to  rest  uj^on  all  the  churches  of  our  land. 
Revive  thy  work  in  them.  Prepare  thy  serA^ants  to  preach 
the  Gosj^cl  with  more  power ;  and  may  it  be,  in  their  hands,  a 
means  of  bringing  many  to  righteousness.  As  the  clouds 
pour  down  rains  upon  the  earth,  so  may  revivals  pour  down 
the  divine  influence  upon  this  nation,  that  it  may  be  cleansed 
from  its  sins,  and  be  prepared  for  that  great  career  which 
thou  art  opening  for  it.  Give  liberty  to  all  for  whom  thou 
hast  died ;  and  may  those  that  call  themselves  by  the  name 
of  Christ  no  longer  tread  under  foot  thy  creatures.  May  men 
here,  and  all  the  world  over,  have  their  rights.  May  the  great 
truths  of  God  in  the  Gospel  go  forth  with  more  and  more 
power  unto  every  part  of  the  earth. 

Wilt  thou  hear  us  in  these  our  petitions,  not  because  we 
are  worthy,  but  because  thou,  O  Jesus,  art  worthy ;  and  to 
thy  name,  to  the  Father,  and  to  the  Spirit,  shall  be  all  the 
praise  evermore.     Amen. 


€^t  (^tarjiing  nf  §ntnh. 


Preached  in  Plymouth  Church,  Brooklyn,  Sabbath  7?iornmg, 
January  ic)th,  1868. 


The  Teachiistg  of  Events. 


"And  when  he  would  not  be  pei'suaded,  we  ceased,  saying,  The  will  of  the 
Lord  be  done." — Acts,  xxi.,  14. 

TiiEER  is  many  a  fern  that  has  laid  its  cheek  to  the  clay 
and  died ;  the  most  insignificant  event,  apparently,  conceiv- 
able ;  and  yet,  after  thousands  and  thousands  of  years,  comes 
the  geologist,  and  when  the  miner  has  laid  bare  the  plant's 
figure  stamped  uj)on  the  stone,  he  reads  in  it  a  history  of 
ages  long  ago.  It  is  just  the  fact,  it  may  be,  needed  to  es- 
tablish certain  great  theories ;  and  this  poor  vegetable,  un- 
noticed when  alive,  and  not  heeded  when  dead,  finds  itself, 
after  many  ages,  summoned  as  a  witness  into  the  sunshine, 
to  testify  to  men  in  what  steps  and  in  what  order  God  built 
the  world.  So  many  an  event  recorded  in  Scripture,  that 
had  little  significance  in  the  time  of  its  happening,  becomes 
very  important  in  later  ages. 

Such  an  event  was  this  in  the  experience  of  Paul.  He 
was  on  his  way  toward  Jerusalem ;  he  had  reached  Cjesarea, 
where  there  came  to  him  the  projjhet  Agabus,  After  the 
manner  of  those  strange  Oriental  teachers,  who  taught  large- 
ly ^Y  symbols  and  figures,  he  took  Paul's  girdle,  and  went 
through  the  form  of  making  himself  a  captive,  binding  his 
own  hands  and  feet,  and  saying,  "  Thus  shall  it  befall,  in 
Jerusalem,  the  man  that  owns  this  girdle."  The  company, 
and  Paul  himself,  apparently,  believed  this  man  to  be  a 
prophet.  They  showed  that  they  regarded  the  prediction  as 
true  in  that  it  aroused  them  up  to  such  earnestness  and  im- 
portunity.    If  you  ask  me  why  (if  they  regarded  him  as  a 


348  The  Teaching  of  Events. 

prophet  of  the  Lord,  and  his  prediction  as  an  event  that  must 
inevitably  occur)  they  did  not  sit  down  with  Oriental  stoi- 
cism, and  say,  "  If  this  is  to  happen,  it  will  happen,  and  there 
is  no  use  to  resist  it,"  I  afiswer  that  they  were  wiser ;  they 
knew  that  it  was  law^ful  to  fight  the  decree  as  long  as  they 
could.  They  all  began  to  persuade  the  apostle  not  to  go  to 
Jerusalem.  How  vehemently  they  did  it,  and  with  what  ten- 
der importunity,  is  shown  in  Paul's  answer :  "  What  mean  ye 
to  weep  and  to  break  my  heart  ?"  It  seems  that  the  impor- 
tunity was  such  that  it  carried  home  to  him  the  question, 
which  also  presents  itself  to  us.  Is  it  lawful  to  strive  against 
things  which  are  to  be  done  ?  Certainly  it  is.  It  is  always 
lawful  to  strive  against  events.  Apparent  evils,  although 
they  may  seem  to  us  as  inevitable,  are  to  be  resisted ;  and  it 
is  perfectly  lawful  to  resist  them  with  all  our  power  in  all 
lawful  ways,  no  matter  how  certainly  they  may  seem  to  be 
descending  upon  us.  These  men  took  the  natural  and  direct 
method  to  resist  the  fulfillment  of  the  prediction.  If  Jerusa- 
lem will  imj)rison  Paul,  they  reasoned,  then  should  Paul  keep 
away  from  Jerusalem,  and  it  will  not  imprison  him.  Paul,  in- 
stead of  being  moved  by  their  importunity  to  stay  away 
from  Jerusalem,  seemed  to  have  been  kindled  to  go ;  for, 
although  he  and  they  were  looking  at  the  same  facts,  they 
were  looking  at  them  from  difierent  points  of  vision.  They 
were  thinking  of  his  safety,  and  of  their  joy  in  him;  Paul  was 
thinking  of  preaching  Christ's  name ;  of  being  a  w^itness  for 
Christ's  truth.  He  was  not  thinking  about  his  own  safety  at 
all,  but  about  the  safety  and  honor  of  the  message  he  bore. 
Thus,  when  they  feared  that  he  might  be  made  a  suffering 
witness,  they  besought  him,  with  all  the  fervor  of  true  affec- 
tion, not  to  go ;  when  he  thought  that  going  to  Jerusalem 
would  cause  him  to  be  seized,  held  captive,  and  made  to  suf- 
fer for  the  name  of  Christ,  that  prospect  of  suffering,  as  we 
see  from  his  noble  declaration  in  favor  of  Christ,  rather  kin- 
dled him  to  go  than  to  stay.  The  same  event,  foreseen,  stim- 
ulated Paul  and  discouraged  them.     They  had  done  all  that 


The  Teaching  of  Events.  849 

• 
they  could  to  persuade  him ;  but  when  Paul  said,  as  nobly  he 

did, "  What  mean  ye  to  weep  and  to  break  my  heart  ?  for 
I  am  ready  not  to  be  bound  only,  but  also  to  die  at  Jerusa- 
lem for  the  name  of  the  Lord  Jesus;"  when  they  saw  that 
they  could  not  prevail  with  him,  and  that  he  would  not  be 
persuaded,  then,  with  tlie  utmost  resignation  they  could  com- 
mand, they  ceased  importuning  and  said, "  The  will  of  the 
Lord  be  done."  Why  did  they  not  say  so  at  first  ?  When 
Agabus  told  them  that  he  was  a  prophet,  and  predicted  that 
Paul  would  go  to  Jerusalem,  and  there  be  made  a  captive, 
why  did  they  not  then  instantly  say, "  The  will  of  the  Lord 
be  done?"  They  were  importunate,  they  were  zealous  in 
their  endeavor  to  ward  off  this  coming  event,  and  so  to  prove 
Agabus  a  false  or  a  mistaken  prophet.  But  when  they  found 
that  their  utmost  endeavor  to  change  his  course  failed,  then 
they  said,  "  The  will  of  the  Lord  be  done." 

They  acted  just  right,  just  as  every  body  ought  to  act. 
Whatever  is  good,  try  with  your  best  power  to  have,  and 
then,  if  you  can  not  get  it,  say, "  The  will  of  the  Lord  be 
done."  Whatever  is  bad  in  your  external  condition,  or  to 
be  dreaded  in  body  or  in  mmd;  whatever  evil  impends  or 
threatens,  resist  it  valiantly  with  all  your  power  and  wis- 
dom ;  and  whenever  you  find  that  resistance  avails  you  noth- 
ing, then  consider  that  it  is  a  revelation,  and  accejJt  it  as 
such.  Events  reveal  the  divine  will ;  but  you  are  not  to  be- 
lieve them  until  you  have  put  them  to  proof  When  you 
have  questioned  them  (events  are  the  only  things  you  have  a 
right  to  put  on  the  rack),  and  opposed  them  with  human  will 
and  wisdom,  and  they  still  bear  the  same  witness,  then  it  is 
time  for  you  to  give  up,  and  to  say,  "  I  know  this  is  a  revela- 
tion of  God's  will  through  events ;  and  the  will  of  the  Lord 
be  done." 

In  our  Lord's  Prayer  is  the  phrase,  "  Thy  will  be  done  in 
earth  as  it  is  in  heaven."  It  there  seems  to  be  generic ;  to  re- 
spect the  spirit  of  nations,  laws,  customs,  and  policies ;  it 
seems  to  be  a  prayer  that  the  s^Dirit  of  Christ  may  pervade 


350  The  Teaching  of  Events. 

the  whole  kingdom  of  the  world.  In  our  text  we  see  a  per- 
sonal use  of  this  generic  spirit ;  it  is  the  heart  saying  in  re- 
gard to  the  individual  life,  "  Thy  will  he  done." 

And  you  may  earnestly  desire  the  will  of  God  in  the  sense 
in  which  it  is  breathed  in  the  Lord's  Prayer,  and  yet  not  de- 
sire the  will  of  the  Lord  in  the  sense  of  this  personal  relation 
to  him.  You  may  desire  God's  will  to  prevail  in  the  matter 
of  national  justice,  in  the  purification  of  the  morals  of  society, 
in  the  civilization  and  elevation  of  men  to  better  conditions, 
in  the  increase  of  refinement  and  knowledge,  in  the  general 
improvement  of  human  life  and  happiness ;  and  yet,  with  all 
this  aspiration  for  God's  will,  sincere  and  genuine  though  it 
be,  you  may  be  quite  unwilling  that  the  will  of  God  should 
prevail  in  your  own  personal  afiairs — where  it  humbles  your 
pride,  for  instance ;  where  it  disappoints  your  ambition ; 
\Yhere  it  opposes  your  selfishness ;  where  it  wounds  your  af- 
fections ;  .where  it  resists  your  schemes,  and  overwhelms  you 
with  embarrassments. 

It  is  this  view  of  the  submission  of  our  hearts  to  God's 
will,  in  the  afiairs  that  respect  our  individual  history,  that  I 
shall  further  speak  of  this  morning.  You  have  often  heard 
the  will  of  God  discussed  as  it  respects  the  whole  world ;  let 
me  discuss  the  will  of  God  as  it  is  revealed  in  events,  in  its 
relation  to  your  individual  and  personal  afiairs. 

I.  I  remai-k  that  God  reveals  his  will  by  his  providence,  and 
through  his  administration  of  events.  We  are  apt  to  lose 
sight  of  this  in  that  other  revelation ;  and  there  is  sometimes 
an  unwise  jealousy  lest  God's  recorded  revelation  should  lose 
something  of  importance  in  our  ej^es  if  we  teach  that  there 
is  also  a  revelation  of  the  will  of  God  in  nature  and  in  the 
events  of  his  providence. 

God's  will  has  been  revealed  in  regard  to  great  moral 
truths,  and  in  regard  to  human  conduct  and  human  charac- 
ter. In  his  word,  and  also  in  human  experience,  he  develops 
the  laws  of  experience,  and  these  laws  of  experience  are  just 
as  much  natural  laws  as  are  the  laws  of  digestion  or  of  health. 


The  Teaching  of  Events.  351 

Whatever  has  been  found  out  in  this  world  by  the  study  of 
the  human  mind,  and  by  the  study  of  the  moral  constitution 
of  man,  is  as  much  a  natural  law  as  are  the  laws  of  heat,  of 
light,  or  of  the  attraction  of  gravitation.  Men  speak  as  if 
natural  laws  were  those  that  resjjected  the  body  or  matter ; 
but  the  most  important  of  natural  laws  are  those  which  touch 
the  soul.  From  the  beginning  there  have  been  unfoldings  of 
certain  laws  of  inward  experience.  These  are  revelations  of 
God's  creative  skill,  and  in  their  higher  ranges,  and  under  cer- 
tain conditions,  have  been  regarded  in  the  world  as  authori- 
tative revelations.  There  are  many  revelations  that  are  not 
authoritative,  but  still  are  revelations.  They  do  not  come  to 
us  with  a  "  thus  saith  the  Lord."  The  Bible  does ;  and  yet 
we  are  not  to  exclude  all  other  revelations  which  lie  outside 
of  this,  such  as  revelations  in  regard  to  great  truths  and 
principles,  revelations  with  regard  to  character,  conduct,  and 
government. 

In  the  light  of  such  general  principles  men  undertake  to  or- 
ganize their  lives ;  they  undertake  to  build  up  fortunes  by  m- 
dustry,  skill,  and  application ;  to  establish  the  conditions  of  a 
happy  family  and  household ;  to  build  a  character  for  them- 
selves which  shall  have  in  it  the  elements  of  trust,  beauty,  and 
power ;  they  organize,  in  short,  by  the  light  and  help  of  the 
revelation  of  great  moral  truths,  a  well-ordered  Christian  life. 

Now  is  there  any  such  thing  as  making  known  to  a  man 
the  will  of  God  in  the  crowd  of  diverse  events  through  which 
every  man  must  make  his  way  in  this  attempt  to  organize  his 
life  ?  We  know  that  justice  is  supreme,  that  truth  is  to  be 
honored,  that  purity  is  to  be  untarnished,  that  God  is  to  be 
supremely  obeyed  and  loved.  We  know  that  we  are  to  love 
our  fellow-men.  All  these  truths  we  acknowledge ;  but  they 
do  not  determine  the  question  whether  I  am  to  be  rich  or  poor. 
They  do  not  tell  me  whether  I  am  to  be  a  poet  or  a  philoso- 
pher. They  do  not  decide  the  questions  of  every-day  life 
upon  which  men  are  to  be  disciplined — the  raising  of  money ; 
the  avoiding  of  dangers ;  the  repairing  of  mischiefs.     Is  there 


352  The  Teaching  of  Events. 

any  revelation  that  tonclies  these  questions  about  which  all 
men  are  properly  interested  ?  The  general  course  I  know ; 
I  am  always  to  follow  the  leadings  of  moral  truths ;  but  how 
about  this  conflict  of  events  ?  How  about  the  arrangement 
of  this  misunderstanding  ?  How  about  that  debt  that  I  did 
not  incur,  but  which,  by  my  social  connections,  has  been  roll- 
ed upon  me  and  threatens  to  crush  me  ?  How  about  my 
children,  that  I  can  not  make  to  walk  entirely  in  the  way  in 
which  I  have  walked?  How  about  all  those  for  whom  I 
carry  sympathy,  and  for  whose  welfare  I  am  to  a  certain 
degree  responsible  ?  How  about  all  the  various  lines  of  in- 
dividual activity  which  men  pursue,  in  the  store,  in  the  shop, 
on  the  land,  and  on  the  sea ;  contesting  here,  resisting  there ; 
rising  or  falling  in  the  crowd  of  transient  experiences — in  re- 
gard to  these,  is  there  any  way  in  which  men  may  know  the 
will  of  God  in  events  ?  In  modes  of  action  we  know  his  will; 
is  there  any  such  thing  as  knowing  the  will  of  the  Lord  in 
respect  to  special  acts  ? 

I  reply  that  we  have  no  such  knowledge  of  events  as  we 
have  of  principles.  A  man  reads  a  declaration  of  principles, 
and  comes  into  possession  of  them.  Their  meaning  is  intel- 
ligible. The  application  of  them  may  be  obscure ;  but,  hav- 
ing once  come  into  the  possession  of  prmciples,  we  know  what 
is  the  Avill  of  God  about  them  for  evermore.  There  is  no 
such  revelation  of  the  divine  will  in  respect  to  events.  We 
have  to  gather  it  gradually  from  a  study  of  the  indications  of 
his  Providence.  But  through  such  study  it  is  revealed  to  us ; 
for  God  reveals  himself  to  us  through  events  just  as  much 
as  of  old  he  did  through  prophets  and  holy  men.  Many  men 
ask,  "  Why  did  God  not  make  practical  duty  just  as  plain  as 
he  did  theoretical  truth?  Why  should  we  be  left  to  find 
put  with  pain  and  uncertainty,  day  by  day,  what  way  in  life 
is  best  for  us  ?"  A  man  says  within  himself,  "  I  am  an  hon- 
est man ;  I  desire  to  do  right,  if  I  only  knew  how,  but  I  am 
perplexed.  Why  should  I  be  thus  perplexed  when  I  want 
to  know  what  is  the  proper  way  and  am  willing  to  do  it  ? 


The  Teaching  of  Events.  353 

Why  should  I  be  left  to  find  it  out  as  best  I  can  ?"  Because 
men  are  to  work  out  for  themselves  the  power  of  thought, 
of  discrimination,  of  judgment,  by  which  they  shall  them- 
selves be  able  to  discern  and  determine  their  own  ways. 
We  are  not  forever  to  be  children.  We  tell  our  children 
that  when  they  grow  up  to  be  men  they  are  to  be  able 
to  discern  for  themselves.  The  hen  cares  for  and  feeds  her 
chickens  until  they  get  to  a  certain  degi'ee  of  growth,  and 
then  she  drives  them  oif,  and  they  must  hunt  their  own  food. 
There  comes  a  time  when  even  birds  and  chickens  have  to  be 
independent ;  and  it  is  not  a  part  of  the  economy  of  this 
world  to  treat  men  all  the  way  through  life  as  if  they  were 
children.  The  very  principle  upon  which  human  afiairs  are 
conducted  is  to  bring  men  by  diverse  influences  of  joy  and 
sorrow  up  to  that  habit  of  thought,  and  judgment,  and  dis- 
crimination that  shall  make  them  able  to  judge  for  them- 
selves of  events,  and  determine  for  themselves  what  is  the 
right  and  the  wrong  course.  I  know  it  would  be  a  great 
deal  easier  to  be  told ;  it  would  be  a  great  deal  easier  if 
men  were  like  several  cars  attached  to  the  locomotive  of 
divine  Providence,  and  the  locomotive  should  go  whirling 
them  on  their  way ;  but,  in  the  economy  of  the  universe, 
men  are  meant  to  convey  themselves ;  to  do  their  own  think- 
ing ;  to  form  their  own  judgments,  and  to  form  correct 
ones.  They  are  at  school  in  this  world  for  that  very  pur- 
pose. The  whole  economy  of  God  is  against  laziness,  and 
in  favor  of  intense,  responsible  activity.  The  whole  moral 
scheme  of  this  world  is  one  that  puts  upon  man  the  duty  of 
learning — in  judgment,  in  taste,  in  moral  sentiment.  It  is  an 
economy  which  is  driving  men  up  to  that  divine  manhood, 
in  which,  although  with  less  sympathy  and  beauty,  yet  after 
the  same  manner,  they  shall  stand,  every  man  in  his  own 
place,  as  God  stands  in  his  place — perfectly  luminous,  per- 
fectly certain,  perfectly  sure.  We  shall  be  partakers  of  the 
divine  nature ;  and  this  nature  is  being  hammered  out  of  us, 
or  into  us,  by  the  conflict  of  events. 
II.— Z 


854  The  Teaching  of  Events. 

It  would  be  a  great  deal  easier,  certainly,  for  lionest  men 
to  have  all  their  judgments  formed  for  them,  and  every  day 
to  find,  written  and  laid  on  their  desks,  a  schedule  of  just 
what  is  right  and  wrong  for  the  day  following.  But  there  is 
no  such  an  economy — there  is  not  to  be  any  such  an  econo- 
my. Men  are  not  only  bound  to  do  what  is  right,  but  they 
are  obliged  to  find  out  Avhat  that  right  is ;  and  I  thmk  the 
most  perplexing  part  of  the  experience  of  human  life,  with 
an  honest  heart,  is  to  know  what  is  right.  It  is  not  doing 
duty,  but  finding  out  what  duty  is,  that  perplexes.  It  is  not 
difiicult  to  find  out  the  will  of  God  in  regard  to  principles, 
as  I  have  said,  but  it  is  difficult  to  find  out  the  will  of  God  in 
respect  to  the  daily  events  of  life — the  right  and  the  wrong, 
the  good  and  the  bad,  the  prosj^erous  and  the  unfortunate. 

The  great  truth  remains,  then,  that  the  events  of  life  con- 
tain in  them  the  letters  of  God's  will  to  individuals.  They 
are  a  revelation  of  the  divine  will  to  men,  if  they  have  learn- 
ed to  read  that  revelation.  As  a  man  may  receive  a  letter, 
telling  him  that  he  has  bequeathed  to  him  a  large  property 
in  England,  and,  being  unable  to  read,  may  carry  that  letter 
in  his  pocket  a  year  without  a  single  experience  of  joy,  be- 
cause he  does  not  know  what  is  in  it,  so  a  man  may  have  a 
message  of  events  from  God  every  day,  and  yet  be  quite  un- 
afiected  by  it,  because  he  does  not  know  how  to  read  this 
mode  of  divine  revelation. 

II.  This  peculiarity,  then,  is  to  be  noticed  in  regard  to  the 
interpretation  of  the  will  of  God  as  made  known  to  us  in 
events — namely,  we  are  to  test  those  events  by  the  full  and 
patient  activity  of  all  our  powers ;  and  it  is  by  thus  trusting 
them  that  we  learn  whether  they  are  or  are  not  revelations 
from  God.  To  secure  those  experiences  which  all  men  regard 
as  good,  to  avert  those  which  seem  to  us  evil,  we  are  not  only 
permitted,  but  we  are  commanded  thus  to  test  events.  It  is 
our  duty  to  seek  health ;  it  is  our  duty  to  avoid  accident  to 
the  body.  No  man  should  willingly  give  uj)  his  right  hand 
or  his  right  eye.     No  man  should  willingly  give  up  any  thing 


The  Teaching  of  Events.  355 

ttat,*  according  to  the  experience  of  the  world,  is  esteemed 
sood.  If  there  come  an  accumulation  of  events  that  indicate 
apparently  that  it  is  the  will  of  God  that  a  man  that  is  rich 
should  become  poor,  avoid  it ;  don't  give  up.  If  a  man 
stands  on  the  vantage-ground,  and  there  come  to  him  some 
event  saying, "  It  is  the  will  of  God  that  you  should  vacate 
your  fine  house,"  say  to  that  event,  "  Prophet,  stand  by  until 
I  try  you  and  prove  you ;  not  if  I  can  resist  it  will  I  give  up 
this  house."  That  is  right.  Avoid  the  evil.  If  a  man  is 
surrounded  by  friends  and  friendships,  and  there  comes  the 
mystic  intimation  of  God's  will  in  events,  and  the  destroy- 
ing angel  spreads  abroad  his  pinions  over  the  community, 
and  the  evil  draws  nearer  and  nearer  to  him,  and  death 
speaks,  now  from  one  side  and  now  from  another,  and  he 
looks  upon  his  own  circle  and  sees  that  here  is  one  suscept- 
ible, and  there  is  one  feeble,  and  it  seems  as  if  every  thing  was 
indicating  that  God  meant  to  break  in  upon  the  unity  of  his 
family,  and  take  one  away  by  death — what  then  ?  Let  no 
man  say  to  me  that  it  is  the  will  of  God  that  my  children 
should  die,  or  that  my  companion  should  be  taken.  I  don't 
believe  a  word  of  it  until  I  can't  help  it.  Fight  bravely 
against  sickness  and  deaih. 

When  Agabus  said  to  the  apostle  and  his  friends, "  This 
man  shall  go  up  to  Jerusalem,  and  the  Jews  shall  bind 
him,"  every  one  turned  to  Paul  and  said,  "  K  God  says  by 
his  prophet  that  you  are  to  be  made  captive  at  Jerusalem, 
don't  go;  thus  we  shall  defeat  the  divine  decree."  They 
were  right  in  saying  so — that  is  to  say,  they  were  right  in 
testing  events  to  see  whether  or  not  they  were  revelations  of 
Avhat  they  appeared  to  be. 

Revelations  are  not  always  known,  any  more  than  nuts 
are,  by  the  way  they  look  on  the  tree.  "Who,  on  first  looking 
at  a  chestnut  bur,  ever  thought  of  what  it  hid ;  yet  the  boys 
will  tell  you  that  if  you  give  it  a  little  frost  the  bur  will 
open,  and  show  the  inside  to  be  a  great  deal  better  than  the 
outside.     Events  are  often  much  better  inside  than  they  are 


356  The  Teaching  of  Events. 

outside.  No  man  knows  their  meaning  till  their  me§sage 
is  fully  uttered.  After  you  have  exhausted  your  wisdom, 
and  your  courage,  and  your  patience ;  after  you  have  invited 
things  desirable  and  repelled  things  repulsive,  if  still  the  evil 
comes  or  the  good  lingers,  then  to  the  final  testimony  of 
events  which  have  been  thus  put  to  the  test  you  are  to  yield, 
and  cry,  as  they  did, "  The  will  of  the  Lord  be  done." 

My  darling  child  lies  sick — my  only  daughter ;  and  am  I, 
as  a  minister  of  God  and  an  exemplar  to  men,  in  submission 
to  the  will  of  my  Master,  to  say  that  this  sickness  is  unto 
death  ?  Because  the  physician  says  she  will  not  recover,  and 
the  nurse  says  she  can  not  recover,  and  my  own  fears  say 
she  may  not  recover,  am  I  to  say  "  It  is  the  will  of  the  Lord 
she  should  die ;  the  will  of  the  Lord  be  done  ?"  No  !  I  will 
fight  death  to  the  last ;  and  when  I  have  made  good  battle 
with  all  the  love,  and  wisdom,  and  patience,  and  fidelity  I 
possess,  and  the  shadow  has  fallen,  and  I  am  defeated,  then  I 
accept  the  event ;  it  is  proved  a  true  prophet  at  last ;  but  I 
would  not  believe  it  until  I  had  tested  it.  Then  I  say,  "  It 
was  the  will  of  the  Lord  she  should  die ;  the  will  of  the  Lord 
be  done."  Not  when  the  revelation  first  comes  do  I  accept 
it  as  an  expression  of  the  will  of  God,  but  when  it  has  done 
its  last  work — that  is  the  revelation.  Facts  threatening  are 
not  revelations ;  facts  accomplished  are. 

This  mingling,  then,  of  the  human  element ;  this  discrimi- 
nating ;  this  wrestling  with  events ;  this  joutting  your  whole 
self  into  the  conflict — this  is  that  method  by  which  we  learn 
to  read  the  lesson  of  events.  "We  learn  to  read  other  kinds 
of  literature  in  other  ways,  but  we  are  to  learn  to  read  the 
literature  of  events  as  being  providential  revelations  of  God's 
will,  and  we  are  to  learn  it  in  that  way. 

m.  The  power  to  read  the  will  of  God,  then,  lies  largely 
in  our  dispositions.  There  are  a  great  many  persons  who 
submit  themselves  upon  the  first  display  of  force,  and  sujj- 
pose  that  their  yielding  is  ^;^e^y.  Remember  that  no  sub- 
missiveness  to  the  divine  will  is  valued  until  it  follows  man- 


The  Teaching  or  Events.  857 

ly  endeavor.  Higli  action  is  the  father  of  true  resignation. 
I  do  not  believe  in  that  submission  to  God's  will  which  comes 
from  cowardice,  from  discouragement,  from  too  easy  a  dis- 
position— laziness  you  may  call  it.  I  don't  believe  that,  as 
soon  as  you  see  evil  threatening,  you  should  say, "  I  see  the 
finger  of  Providence,"  and  give  right  up.  When  our  Savior 
went  with  the  apostles  to  Emmaus,  he  made  as  though  he 
would  go  further;  but  they  entreated  him  to  abide  with 
them,  and  he  then  turned  aside  and  sjsent  the  hours  with 
them  there.  So  God's  providence  often  looks  as  though  it 
would  go  on ;  if  you  don't  want  it  to  go  on,  stop  it.  Don't 
you  know  that  love  oftentimes  says  "  No,"  in  order  that  it 
may  be  made  to  say  "  Yes  ?"  In  the  dealing  of  God  with 
you  through  the  events  of  life,  beware  lest  you  submit  too 
easily;  beware  that  you  are  not  too  forward  with  resigna- 
tion ;  beware  that  you  do  not  give  up  your  will  too  soon. 
It  is  a  great  thing  to  give  up  one's  will,  when  it  must  be 
given  uj),  nobly  and  thoroughly,  but  it  is  a  great  thing  not 
to  give  it  up  until  you  are  really  compelled  to  do  it.  Do 
you  suppose  that  God  put  in  you  the  power  of  discrimination 
for  nothing  ?  Do  you  suppose  that  God  gave  you  your  am- 
bition for  nothing  ?  When  the  Trill  of  God  is  revealed  in 
facts  accomplished,  then  submit ;  but  do  not  submit  too 
quickly.  Do  not  lay  down  your  arms  before  you  are  com- 
pelled, lest  you  find  out  afterward  that  you  surrendered 
when  God  was  ready  to  give  you  victory. 

There  is  a  great  deal  of  what  is  called  "  submitting  to  the 
will  of  God"  that  is  the  poorest  kind  of  piety.  Do  not  think 
that  because  you  are  thirty-five  years  old,  and  all  your  en- 
deavors thus  far  have  failed,  and  it  seems  to  be  the  will  of 
God  that  you  should  be  a  useless  man,  that  you  will  submit, 
and  seek  to  spend  the  rest  of  your  life  in  some  quiet  seclu- 
sion. Oh,  you  lazy  one  !  Do  you  suppose  that  God  is  jsroud 
of  such  su.bmission  and  of  such  children  as  that  ?  He  tingles 
you  with  events,  not  to  make  you  give  up,  but  to  make  you 
wake  up.     What !  stand  where  you  are  at  thirty-five,  forty, 


358  The  Teaching  of  Events. 

or  at  forty-five,  because  it  seems  to  you  that  the  mdications 
of  divine  Providence  are  that  you  have  not  fulfilled  your  des- 
tiny ?  Do  you  say  that  you  are  fifty  years  old,  and  that  there- 
fore you  ought  to  give  up  ?  You  are  at  an  age  when  a  ripe  ex- 
perience ought  to  make  you  all  the  more  successful.  What ! 
you  give  up  ?  and,  above  all,  give  up  on  a  coward's  plea — 
that  the  will  of  God,  revealed  in  circumstances,  requires  it  ? 
It  is  not  the  will  of  God  revealed  in  circumstances.  Wliat- 
ever  thing,  therefore,  is  right ;  whatever  thing  is  good ;  what- 
ever thing  is  just ;  whatever  thing  is  desirable  for  you,  still 
seek  it ;  and  if  old  ways  fail  you,  try  new  ways.  Be  you 
young  until  you  die,  so  far  as  energy,  persistence,  ambition, 
and  augmentation  of  resources  are  concerned.  There  are 
some  things  that  curl  over  easily  in  the  autumn.  Their 
leaves  become  sear  and  yellow,  and  fall  to  the  ground  before 
there  are  any  signs  of  frost  in  the  air.  I  do  not  like  such 
vegetables ;  I  do  not  have  them  in  my  garden.  Others  car- 
ry their  green  leaves  clean  down  into  freezing  before  they 
give  up.  These  I  like.  And  I  like  to  see  men  that  can  look 
at  God's  frosts  and  not  be  blighted,  but  remain  green,  and 
succulent,  and  growing,  even  into  the  edges  of  winter. 

But  when  the  event  has  happened,  then,  on  the  other  hand, 
remember  that  no  energy  is  blest,  no  enterprise  is  divine, 
which  does  not  carry  in  it,  latent,  the  spirit  of  resignation 
and  submission.  In  the  day  of  battle,  fight  as  though  you 
were  a  lion.  In  the  day  of  defeat,  yield.  Persevere  in  your 
endeavor  to  the  very  last;  but  the  moment  the  event  has 
transpired  which  settles  the  question,  accept  the  will  of  God, 
and  yield  to  it. 

I  do  not  blame  you,  when  your  child  is  sick,  that  you  re- 
sist the  ill  omen ;  but  remember  the  prophet  of  old,  the  sweet 
singer  of  Isi'ael,  who,  when  told  that  his  child  was  sick,  would 
not  eat,  but  girded  himself  with  sackcloth,  and  lay  all  night 
upon  the  ground.  Wlien  the  child  died,  his  servants  whis- 
pered among  themselves  and  feared  to  tell  him,  and  said, 
"  Wliile  the  child  was  yet  alive,  we  spake  unto  him,  and  he 


The  Teaching  of  Events.  359 

would  not  hearken  unto  our  voice ;  how  will  he  then  vex 
himself  if  we  tell  him  that  the  child  is  dead  ?"  When  David 
saw  them  whispering  among  themselves,  he  said, "  Is  the  child 
dead  ?"  And  he  arose,  and  washed  himself,  and  changed  his 
aj^parel,  and  went  rejoicing  into  the  house  of  God,  and  praised 
his  name.  His  servants  were  all  amazed,  and  inquired  of  him, 
"  Why  is  this  ?  while  the  child  was  yet  alive,  you  lay  upon 
the  ground  fasting  and  weeping ;  but,  now  that  the  child  is 
dead,  you  rise  and  eat  bread  ?"  "  Because,"  said  the  old  wise 
king,  "  while  the  child  was  yet  alive  I  fasted  and  wept,  for  I 
said.  Who  can  tell  whether  God  will  be  gracious  to  me  that 
the  child  may  live  ?  But,  now  that  he  is  dead,  wherefore 
should  I  fast  ?  I  shall  go  to  him,  but  he  shall  not  return  to 
me."  And  he  praised  God.  How  beautiful  is  his  example  ! 
How  his  soul  went  out  in  acquiescence  to  the  will  of  God.  It 
was  the  will  of  God ;  he  knew  it ;  and  he  resigned  himself 
to  it. 

Oftentimes  God  knows  that  the  snatchieg  of  a  child  is  the 
sorest  affliction  that  he  can  bring  upon  us ;  but  to  some  men 
other  trials  are  yet  more  severe.  Many  a  man  has  suffered 
more  from  bankruptcy  than  he  would  from  bereavements. 
But,  in  whatever  way  events  make  known  the  will  of  God  to 
you,  and  wherever  you  are,  remember,  do  not  give  up  until 
you  are  compelled  to ;  but  when  you  do  give  up,  do  it  thor- 
oughly ;  do  it  sweetly ;  do  it  beautifully.  This  is  one  of  the 
most  difficult  things  in  the  world. 

It  is  said  that  on  the  battle-field  some  die  in  rage,  and  lie 
with  clenched  fists,  with  jsassion  apparent  in  their  face.  Oth- 
ers, that  in  the  conflict  carried  themselves  with  magnificent 
powers,  in  death  lie  with  smiles  upon  their  faces,  as  if  they 
had  died  dreaming  sweet  dreams  of  home,  even  amid  the  hor- 
ror of  the  battle  around  them.  That  is  beautiful.  When 
you  die  in  the  conflict  of  life,  don't  die  gnarled  and  strife- 
marked,  but  with  the  look  of  resignation  in  your  face.  If  you 
are  overthrown,  you  then  know  what  God's  will  is ;  don't 
give  up  before,  but  give  up  then,  and  do  it  like  a  man. 


360  The  Teaching  of  Events. 

A  great  many  men  know  how  to  "be  poor  who  would  be 
ruined  if  God  should  pull  them  up  into  sudden  prosperity. 
Other  men  have  been  prosperous  all  their  life  long,  and  are 
very  beautiful,  and  sweet,  and  companionable,  and  lovable  as 
long  as  they  are  prosperous ;  but  reverse  the  experience,  and 
they  are  the  reverse.  They  do  not  know  how  to  be  j)Oor. 
They  never  before  had  such  a  trial.  A  true  manhood  gives 
one  strength,  not  only  in  prosperity,  but  in  adversity.  It 
makes  a  man  proof  against  blandishments  on  the  one  side, 
and  against  prosperity  on  the  other ;  against  persecution  and 
against  flattery. 

With  this  general  interpretation  of  the  doctrine  of  the  rev- 
elation of  events,  let  me  close  with  a  few  points  of  personal 
and  practical  application. 

There  is  no  such  thing  as  interpreting  the  will  of  God  un- 
less we  have  in  us  the  spirit  of  children.  What  is  the  spirit 
of  children  ?  Love — confidence.  If  a  man  comes  to  the  in- 
terpretation of  ad¥erse  or  of  fortunate  events  in  the  spirit  of 
pride,  he  will  never  know  their  meaning.  God  locks  up  his 
best  blessings,  but  gives  to  every  man  a  key  wherewith  to 
open  the  lock.  One  man  takes  his  key,  and  goes  up  to  the 
lock,  and  tries  to  unlock  it ;  but  his  key  will  not  fit ;  it  will  not 
go  in,  because  it  is  Pride  that  he  has  been  trying  to  unlock 
with.  Another  man  says, "  Let  me  try  my  key."  He  takes 
Vcmity ;  but  he  finds  that  vanity  will  not  unlock  the  door 
of  divine  Providence  and  reveal  the  secrets  that  are  within. 
Another  man  comes  up  with  the  key  of  willful  Selfishness. 
His  key  is  three  times  as  big  as  the  keyhole,  and  he  can't 
get  in.  They  all  fail  to  unlock  the  door  and  go  away.  By- 
and-by  anotlier  man  comes.  He  puts  his  key  to  the  lock ;  it 
slides  in ;  there  is  not  a  ward  that  it  does  not  touch ;  the 
bolt  slides  back  without  a  sound,  and  the  door  swings  open. 
He  knows  the  secret.  He  comes  in  the  spirit  of  love,  obe- 
dience, and  resignation,  and  to  him  God's  will  is  revealed. 
Pride  could  not  open  the  door ;  Vanity  could  not  open  it ; 
Selfishness  could  not  open  it ;  Love  could. 


The  Teaching  of  Events.  361 

"  Seest  thou  a  man  wise  in  his  own  conceit  ?  there  is  more 
hope  of  a  fool  than  of  him."  There  is  no  man  so  big  a  fool 
as  he  that  thinks  that  he  knows  every  thing,  and  that  nobody 
can  teach  him.  But  if  a  man  has  the  spirit  of  filial  love ;  if 
he  says, "  My  Father  knows  me,  and  knows  all  my  circum- 
stances. I  love  him,  and  his  will  is  my  will ;"  and  if,  when 
events  come,  he  will  look  at  them  with  a  child-like,  loving 
spirit,  to  him  will  be  given  to  interpret  the  revelation  of 
God's  will  in  events.  Love  is  better  than  philosophy.  The 
intuitions  of  love  are  the  best  guides  that  are  offered  to  us 
in  this  life. 

Remember,  then,  if  you  would  know  how  to  read  your  Fa- 
ther's manuscript,  written  every  day  in  the  letters  of  events, 
you  must  have  the  spirit  of  filial  love. 

In  the  truth  we  have  been  considering,  there  is  great  cause 
of  renewed  hope  and  courage  to  the  downcast.  There  is 
many  a  brave  heart  born  into  life  under  the  most  unfavorable 
circumstances.  Here  is  a  young  man  that  feels, "  My  parents 
were  poor,  my  opportunities  are  few,  but  I  have  in  me  the 
spirit  of  a  man.  I  can  not  bear  to  be  a  drudge.  I  fain  would 
become  educated,  and  rise  above  my  present  circumstances, 
but  I  have  no  property,  no  patrons,  no  friends.  There  is  the 
academy,  but  I  can  not  subsist  there.  There  is  the  college, 
but  I  may  not  walk  through  its  shady  groves ;  yet,  of  all 
things  on  earth,  I  desire  to  be  educated."  Why,  then,  do 
you  not  become  educated  ?  How  much  you  desire  it  will  be 
shown  by  your  conduct.  If  you  desire  it  more  than  ease, 
more  than  food,  more  than  raiment,  more  than  comforts,  more 
than  fellowships,  more  than  society ;  if  you  desire  it  more 
than  any  other  thing  on  earth,  the  probability  is  that  with 
that  spirit  you  will  get  it.  But  when  a  man  has  this  sacred 
thirst  for  knowledge  awakened  within  him,  and  then,  al- 
though all  the  indications  of  Providence  seem  against  him, 
works  persistently  with  head,  and  heart,  and  hand,  giving  up 
every  thing  else  to  accomplish  what  he  so  much  desires — 
what  does  he  get  ?    Familiarity  with  literature ;  a  knowl- 


862  The  Teaching  of  Events. 

edge  of  Greek  and  Latin ;  familiarity  with  the  classics ;  a 
knowledge  of  the  sciences — but  is  that  all  ?  That  is  but  the 
merest  sugarmg  of  the  loaf:  he  has  got  the  habit  of  succeed- 
ing ;  the  habit  of  self-  sacrificing ;  the  habit  of  victorious 
culture. 

If,  therefore,  there  be  any  here  that  want  an  education,  but 
are  jjoor,  and  whose  parents  are  poor,  I  say  to  you  that  I  do 
not  know  whether  you  can  get  it  or  not.  If  you  are  self- 
indulgent,  you  can  not.  If  you  look  at  an  education  as  a 
child  looks  at  a  custard  upon  a  shelf,  who  cries  because  he 
can  not  get  up  to  it,  you  can  not  get  it ;  and  it  is  probable 
that  you  arc  not  worth  it.  Wliy  should  such  men  be  edu- 
cated ?  We  have  educated  fools  enough  already !  Why  not 
stay  where  you  are  useful  ?  You  have  no  right  to  be  more 
than  you  are  if  you  can  not  master  your  circumstances ;  if 
you  can  not  work  your  way  upward  by  the  potency  and  in- 
vincibleness  of  your  will.  Do  you  dare  to  look  events  in  the 
face  and  defy  them  ?  Do  you  dare  to  go  up  through  all  op- 
position to  victory,  and,  having  done  all,  to  stand  ?  Then 
you  need  not  ask  for  patronage ;  you  will  get  an  education. 
But  if  you  can  not  work  your  way  up,  what  are  you  crying 
for?  Why  don't  you  turn  to  things  that  you  are  fitted  for? 
God  means  to  make  vxen  in  this  world.  All  the  rest  are  rub- 
bish. They  are  as  the  chips  where  the  house  is  built.  Men 
are  timbers,  and  are  being  built  up  into  God's  house. 

There  are  persons  who  are  seeking  the  way  of  life,  but  are 
surrounded,  without  tlieir  consent  and  apparently  without 
their  instrumentality,  with  such  tribulations  that  they  hardly 
know  what  to  think  or  do ;  men  that  have  made  mistakes  in 
their  social  connections ;  men  who  are  all  the  time  thrown 
into  circumstances  that  aggravate  their  dispositions;  men 
that  find  themselves  so  blocked  up  on  every  side,  that,  after 
bearing  it  for  years  and  years,  they  say  to  themselves,  al- 
though youth  is  still  on  them,  that  they  were  born  to  ill  luck 
and  sorrow ;  that  there  is  no  use  in  their  trying ;  that  they 
have  bufieted  opposition  as  long  as  they  can,  and  would  God 


The  Teaching  op  Events.  363 

that  they  might  die ;  and  at  last  say,  in  their  despair, "  If  God 
will  not  help  me,  I  will  kill  myself."  In  general,  suicides  are 
insane  men.  If  they  are  not,  in  a  great  majority  of  instances, 
it  does  not  make  much  difference  whether  they  live  or  die. 
They  have  no  courage,  no  stamina,  no  true  manhood.  What ! 
You  are  surrounded  with  trouble ;  you  are  surrounded  with 
difficulties;  you  are  mortified  and  disappointed  every  day, 
and  know  not  that  it  is  the  voice  of  God  to  you  ? 

What  would  you  have  thought  if  a  recruit,  on  being  sent 
down  to  the  Army  of  the  Potomac,  had  cried  the  first  day 
because  he  could  not  get  any  plum-pudding ;  and  on  the  sec- 
ond day  because  his  clothes  were  torn,  and  he  had  no  one  to 
sew  them  up ;  and  on  the  third  day  because  he  had  to  march 
farther  than  he  wanted  to  ?  They  take  such  weaknesses  out 
of  boys  pretty  quickly  in  the  army. 

There  are  men  in  God's  army  suffering  what  all  soldiers 
sufier,  deprivation  and  hardship  on  every  side ;  the  missiles 
of  the  enemy  come  hurling  in,  asking  no  leave  (for  bomb- 
shells and  shot  do  not  stand  on  ceremony).  But  by  life's 
battle  there  is  being  wrought  out  in  them  a  nobler  man- 
hood, an  enfranchised  will,  a  purified  courage,  a  sweeter  res- 
ignation, an  invisible  trust  in  God,  and  thus  they  are  being 
l^repared  to  rise  superior  to  their  circumstances,  and  to  evince 
a  divinely-kindled  manhood.  Be  not,  then,  easily  discour- 
aged by  opposition,  nor  sit  down  ignominiously  and  cry  be- 
cause the  way  is  not  made  smooth  before  you.  It  is  this  op- 
position which  tests  your  manhood  and  which  makes  it. 

Is  there  any  thing  nobler  than  a  true  manhood?  any  thing 
toward  which  we  should  more  seek  to  inspire  our  children  ? 
Is  there  any  thing  more  sad  than  a  human  form  walking 
through  an  aimless  life,  discouraged  at  every  bufieting,  and 
turned  aside  by  every  obstacle  ?  O  that  the  dead  would  go 
to  the  grave-yard !  O  that  the  dead  would  bury  their  dead ! 
While  you  live,  in  God's  name  live  !  Do  not  succumb  to 
circumstances,  nor  count  yourself  unworthy  of  suffering  with 
Christ,  that  the  divine  nature  may  be  developed  in  you.    If 


364:  The  Teaching  of  Events. 

the  Captain  of  our  salvation  was  made  perfect  through  suf- 
fering, shall  we,  the  soldiers,  endure  less  ?  Are  we  better 
than  our  Lord  ? 

Human  life  must  be  measured  by  new  standards.  The 
first  shall  be  last,  and  the  last  shall  be  first ;  great  thino-s  are 
little,  and  little  things  are  great,  when  you  look  at  them  in 
the  light  of  God's  truth.  All  life  is  full  of  profound  meaning 
and  of  deep  importance.  The  most  trivial  events  ;  the  deal- 
ings of  God  with  you,  morning,  noon,  and  night,  when  you 
look  at  them  with  the  eye  of  faith,  of  love,  of  filial  submis- 
sion to  the  will  of  God,  assume  a  vast  importance,  and  hu- 
man life  is  transformed  into  a  very  different  thing  from  what 
it  seems  to  be  to  the  worldly-minded  man. 

God  did  not  put  us  into  this  world  for  nothing.  Its  joys, 
its  sorrows,  its  cares,  its  burdens,  and  its  toils  all  have  a  place 
in  the  divine  purpose.  For  you  and  me  Christ  died — to  de- 
velop his  own  manhood  in  you  and  me.  He  saves  you  by 
working  out  the  divine  nature  in  us. 

This  world  is  a  glorious  worksho])  for  making  men.  The 
fire  is  hot  enough  to  make  you  a  white  heat,  and  the  anvil  is 
broad  enough  to  turn  you  into  such  shapes  as  God  wants. 

Be  ye  men,  therefore,  and  count  nothing  of  experience 
amiss,  whether  it  be  of  joy  or  of  sorrow,  remembering  that 
all  things  work  together  for  the  good  of  those  that  love  the 
Lord. 

Love  him,  and  so  be  victorious  over  life ;  and  he  that  con- 
quers life  shall  find  death  itself  conquered,  and  himself  a  vic- 
tor before  God  and  his  angels. 


XVII. 

Cjiristiaii  ClmrnrtEr. 


Preached  in  Plymouth  Church,  Brooklyn,  December  29///,  1867. 


Cheistian  Chaeactee. 


"But  as  many  as  received  him,  to  them  gave  he  power  to  become  the  sons 
of  God,  even  to  them  that  believe  on  his  name :  which  were  born,  not 
of  blood,  nor  of  the  will  of  the  flesh,  nor  of  the  will  of  man,  but  of  God." 
—John,  i.,  12,  13. 

The  sons  of  the  king  are  royal,  and  tliey  stand  at  the  head 
of  the  most  favored  class  in  society.  To  be  admitted  into 
sonship  with  God  implies  at  once  (certainly  to  those  to  whom 
this  word  first  came)  admission  to  eminence  —  to  pre-emi- 
nence. They  were  not  born  to  it ;  they  were  born  again  to 
it.     It  did  not  come,  in  other  words,  by  natural  causation. 

The  Hebrew  language  did  not  abound  in — it  scarcely  pos- 
sessed— generic  philosophical  terms ;  and  in  expressing  what 
would  be  called  a  philosophical  truth  in  our  modern  terms, 
it  always  employed  a  sort  of  paraphrase.  Instead  of  saying 
"  God  is  every  where,"  the  Hebrew  would  say, "  He  is  in  the 
heavens  above,  in  the  earth  beneath,  and  in  the  waters  under 
the  earth,"  and  thus,  by  a  series  of  specifications,  produce  the 
impression  in  the  mind  which  we  produce  by  a  single  specific 
term.  We  should  say,  Natural  causes  will  not  produce  in  a 
man  the  sonship  which  makes  him  a  child  of  God.  The  apos- 
tle states  that  the  sons  of  God  "  were  born,  not  of  blood,  nor 
of  the  will  of  the  flesh,  nor  of  the  will  of  man,  but  of  God," 
which  is  only  a  circuitous  way  of  stating  that  which  we  ordi- 
narily should  say  in  much  fewer  words :  Natural  causes  never 
produce  Christian  manhood. 

In  so  far  as  individual  men  are  concerned,  religion  aims 
first  and  mainly  at  the  production  of  character.  Although 
Christianity  has  respect  to  the  outward  life,  to  society,  to  the 


868  •      Christian  Character. 

most  minute  acts,  it  is  only  as  results,  not  as  the  primal  end. 
It  seeks  to  produce  a  state  of  mind  of  great  purity  and  power, 
and  from  that  state  it  derives  the  influences  which  shall  con- 
trol all  the  details  of  human  life.  Christianity  seeks  to  pro- 
duce a  certain  inward  condition;  we  call  it  character.  It 
assumes,  then,  that  with  that  force  established  within,  the 
exterior  fruits,  the  moralities,  and  the  characteristics  of  life 
will  follow  naturally.  The  main  thing  is  to  secure  the  gene- 
ric force.  At  first  it  seeks  to  produce  a  character  resulting 
from  the  predominant  influence  of  the  moral  sentiments  rath- 
er than  of  the  ordinary  secular  forces  of  the  human  mind. 
Christianity  assumes  that  all  the  lower  range  of  human  pow- 
ers have  theu'  appropriate  stimuli  in  the  natural  organization 
of  the  globe.  It  not  only  assumes,  but  asserts,  that  the  high- 
est part  of  man  is  beyond  the  reach  of  the  ordinary  influences 
of  the  world.  It  builds  its  throne  higher  than  the  flesh,  high- 
er than  the  appetites  and  passions,  higher  than  common  do- 
mestic afiections,  higher  than  taste  or  reason  itself  It  en- 
thrones itself  in  the  moral  sentiments.  It  seeks  to  frame  and 
fashion  not  merely  an  ideal,  but  a  potential  character.  It 
seeks  to  give  vitality  and  force  to  the  higher  part  of  man's 
nature — such  a  vitality  as  that  it  shall  rule  and  dominate 
over  every  other  part.  By  nature  a  man's  lowest  faculties 
are  strongest.  He  is  first  the  animal,  then  the  emotive  crea- 
ture, and  then  he  begins  to  be  a  reasoning  creature.  Last  in 
the  order  of  time,  and  least  in  the  order  of  power,  is  man 
strong  in  his  moral  nature.  Therefore,  when  it  is  attempted 
by  the  power  of  revelation,  by  the  system  of  Christianity,  to 
establish  man  in  his  right  estate,  and  give  him  his  right  pro- 
portions and  power,  the  aim  is,  first,  to  produce  Christian 
character,  which  consists  in  the  prominence  of  the  higher  sen- 
timents in  man's  nature  over  all  the  lower  ones.  Every  body 
believes  that  there  are  spiritual  elements ;  that  they  are  very 
becoming ;  that  religion,  of  course,  develops  them,  and  that 
they  are  to  be  a  part  of  our  experience ;  but  that  is  not  the 
true  idea.     Religion  is  not  a  luxury ;  it  is  a  necessity.     It  is 


Chkistian  Character.  869 

not  incidental ;  it  is  primary.  It  is  to  be  the  controlling 
force ;  the  chief  sentiment  in  man's  nature,  by  which,  more 
than  by  any  thing  else,  he  is  to  be  governed. 

This  character  is  not  producible  by  the  ordinary  agencies 
of  human  life,  but  requires  the  direct  influence  and  inspira- 
tion of  the  divine  mind.  I  am  not  saying  that  there  are  no 
means  to  be  employed.  I  am  not  saying  that  education 
has  nothing  to  do  with  the  production  of  it ;  but  education 
alone,  as  consisting  in  the  application  of  the  mind  to  nat- 
ural forces,  can  not  produce  this  si^iritual  character,  in  Avhich 
true  religion  centres.  Whatever  agencies  may  be  employed ; 
whatever  educating  forces  can  be  brought  to  bear — and  you 
can  not  make  them  too  broad  or  comprehensive  —  without 
God's  Spirit  they  will  all  be  as  void  as  husbandry  would  be 
if  the  sun  did  not  shine.  There  is  to  be  the  animating,  vital- 
izing influence  of  the  mind  of  God ;  the  direct  influence  of 
the  divine  mind  upon  the  human,  as  much  as  there  is  the  di- 
rect penetration  and  piercing  of  the  sun  into  the  soil  before 
the  plant  can  be  organized,  or  life  under  husbandry  come 
forth. 

Man's  lower  nature  may  be  educated  by  the  physical  pro- 
visions that  are  made.  The  globe,  the  wants  that  spring 
from  our  relations  to  it,  the  fear  of  sufiering,  the  joy  and 
repose  which  spring  from  obedience  to  natural  laws  and 
the  exigencies  of  society  in  which  men  find  themselves — all 
these  are  so  many  masters  by  which  men  are  taught.  But 
do  you  suppose  that  they  need  no  other  teaching  than  this 
lower  education,  which  is  already  provided  in  the  physical 
structure  of  the  globe  ?  True,  savage  nations  come  up  with- 
out revelation,  and  a  certain  degree  of  civilization  results 
without  special  divine  influences — a  civilization  which  re- 
quires no  inspiration  for  its  development.  A  man's  intel- 
lectual development  is  secured  by  the  provisions  of  society. 
I  can  conceive  a  man  to  have  been  intellectually  elevated 
by  no  other  causations  than  those  which  result  from  the 
friction  of  mind  on  mind ;  by  the  stimulant  of  ambition ;  by 

IL— Aa 


370  Christian  Character. 

the  desire  of  fame ;  by  the  influence  of  love.  All  these  va- 
rious motives  will  drive  on  the  mere  intellect  to  a  very  high 
deo^ree  of  fineness,  of  comprehensiveness,  and  of  power.  The 
passions,  too,  and  the  domestic  affections,  may  receive  their 
education  through  visible  causes  with  the  life  of  the  nation. 
If  a  man  had  nothing  more  in  him  than  his  bodily  condition, 
his  intellectual  force,  his  passions  and  appetites,  and  his  do- 
mestic afiections,  I  should  not  feel  disposed  to  say  that  he 
could  not  be  educated  by  natural  causes  and  by  natural  ex- 
citements. On  the  other  hand,  I  should  be  disposed  to  say 
that  God  has  made  all  the  provision  that  you  want  in  nature 
to  educate  man  by  obedience  to  natural  causes.  So  far  as 
man  is  a  creature  of  time,  all  the  means  of  time-culture  have 
been  produced  within  the  circuit  of  time. 

But  man  is  not  wholly  a  creature  of  tune ;  he  is  more  than 
that.  He  but  takes  this  world  on  his  way  to  the  other.  The 
provisions  that  are  sufficient  to  make  him  a  denizen  of  this 
world  are  not  sufficient  to  make  him  a  citizen  of  that  other 
and  greater  realm  where  the  body  shall  be  abolished,  where 
all  these  secular  instincts  shall  have  passed  away,  and  where 
he  shall  stand  as  a  spiritual  creature.  This  character,  which 
is  to  last  beyond  death,  and  is  to  be  potential  beyond  the 
grave,  it  is  that  is  to  be  produced  beforehand,  here,  in  man. 

For  the  production  of  this  higher  spiritual  state  two  ele- 
ments are  required — the  secular  education,  and  also  the  vital- 
izing power  of  the  divine  Spirit,  the  touch  of  the  divine  mind 
upon  our  own.  How  ?  We  know  not  in  what  way  it  works. 
"The  wind  bloweth  where  it  listeth,  and  thou  hearest  the 
sound  thereof,  but  canst  not  tell  whence  it  cometh  nor  whith- 
er it  goeth :  so  is  every  one  that  is  born  of  the  Sj)irit,"  says 
the  Master. 

The  religious  nature  of  man,  then,  is  not  produced — cer- 
tainly it  is  not  developed,  still  less  is  it  made  predominant 
by  natural  forces  alone,  but  only  by  the  superadded  and  dis- 
tinctive influence  of  the  divine  mind  upon  the  human.  That 
gives  life.     Before  man  is  touched  by  the  divine  energy  he 


Christian  Character.  871 

is  represented  by  the  Scriptures  as  shrouded  in  sleep ;  he  is 
spoken  of  as  being  dead ;  but  when  he  comes  into  active  re- 
lation with  the  divine  mind  he  is  said  to  live.  And  if  the 
point  of  time  at  which  he  begins  to  live  is  spoken  of,  he  is 
said  to  be  born,  or  to  be  born  again.  He  is  regarded  in  his 
natural  state  as  imprisoned ;  when  he  comes  into  active  com- 
munion with  God,  he  is  rej)resented  as  being  no  longer  a 
prisoner,  but  set  free — emancipated.  "  Children  of  liberty" 
these  are  called.  In  the  natural  state,  like  a  bud  in  winter, 
men  are  undeveloped.  When  God  gives  them  life,  it  is  like 
the  coming  of  summer ;  every  bud  bursts ;  every  bulb  starts, 
and  soon  the  brown  and  desolate  fields  are  covered  with  ac- 
tivity and  life.  But  the  field  never  resurrects  itself.  There 
is  never  any  pulsation  in  the  earth  or  tree  until  there  is  a 
pulsation  in  the  king  of  all  summers  —  in  the  sun  itself 
These  figures  run  harmoniously  and  uniformly  throughout 
the  New  Testament. 

Lest  any  man  should  call  his  own  fancies  or  mere  excite- 
ments that  divine  inspiration,  and  so  believe  himself  to  be 
developing  a  true  chai-acter  in  Christ  Jesus  (the  moral  ele- 
ments alone  being  developed),  there  is  a  discriminating  test 
of  a  true  inspiration.  Our  Master  says  (in  John)  that  we  are 
the  branches  of  the  Vine  ;  and  that  we  are  to  know  that  we 
are  in  him  by  our  bringing  forth  the  same  fruit  that  he  brings 
forth.  Divine  fruit  is  to  be  the  test.  "By  their  fruits  ye 
shall  know  them." 

What  are  the  fruits  of  the  Spirit  ?  The  fruit  of  the  Spirit 
is  love,  joy,  peace,  long-suffering,  gentleness,  goodness,  faith, 
meekness,  temperance.     Against  such  there  is  no  law. 

Love :  there  is  a  narrow,  natural  feeling  which  is  called 
love ;  but  the  universal  feeling  —  did  nature,  uninstructed, 
ever  produce  that  ?  Did  there  ever  arise,  in  one  single  in- 
stance, a  man  that,  by  force  of  education,  stood  as  God  him- 
self stands.  All-loving,  so  that  love  was  the  characteristic, 
dominant,  controlling  element  of  his  whole  nature  ?  Where 
have  been  the  schools  of  philosophy  that  have  taught  this  ? 


372  Christian  Character. 

Philosophy  has  always  dwelt  in  the  outward  court  of  the 
temple,  which  is  intellect ;  the  real  holy  of  holies  in  every 
man  is  back  of  the  understanding  ;  it  is  in  the  soul ;  it  is  in 
the  heart.  The  very  highest  of  all  others ;  the  most  munifi- 
cent, the  most  divine,  the  most  characteristic  result  of  the 
touch  of  God's  Spirit  on  man's  is  this  power  of  loving.  "  But 
if  ye  love  them  which  love  you,  what  reward  have  ye  ?" 
saith  Christ.  God  loves  unlovely  men.  God  loves  unthank- 
ful and  ungrateful  men.  So  long  as  the  sun  forgets  not  to 
come,  and  so  long  as  the  showers  continue  to  sweep  over  the 
ground  of  the  evil  and  the  good  alike,  so  long  there  will  be 
testimony  in  the  heavens  and  in  the  air  that  God  is  one  that 
knows  how  to  love  uuloveliness.  Love  in  us  is  a  quality  that 
has  to  be  provoked  and  fed  by  others  ;  but  love  in  God  dwells 
mightier  than  the  sun  in  the  air.  Is  it  the  summer  that  coax- 
es the  sun  to  come  back  now  from  his  far  southern  circuit? 
Is  it  the  counsel  of  the  daisies  upon  the  hill-sides  ?  Is  it  the 
voice  of  the  all-persuasive  violets  in  the  nook  that  sends  mes- 
sages to  the  far-off  spring,  saying,  "  Come,  for  the  grass  tar- 
ries ?  Come,  for  the  flowers  wait  ?"  And  wull  the  sun  come 
to  the  place  prepared  for  it  at  their  call  ?  Or  is  the  sun  car- 
rying, rather,  in  his  own  nature,  all  the  daisies,  and  all  the 
violets,  and  all  the  fruits ;  and  wall  he  pour  out  of  his  royal 
love  the  summer  warmth  that  shall  make  all  the  trees  and  the 
valleys  green?  So  God  does  not  wait  to  recognize  loveliness 
before  he  loves ;  he  produces  loveliness  by  loving.  He  pours 
out  of  his  own  nature  that  which  he  admires  in  us.  He  sees 
hunself  in  us  and  rejoices  in  us.  The  first  fruit  of  the  Spirit 
of  God  is  love.  We  have  a  certain  sort  of  poor,  arithmetical 
numbered  love ;  we  love  one,  two,  three,  four,  because  they 
belong  to  our  house ;  we  love  our  neighbor ;  we  love  those 
that  minister  to  us ;  we  love  those  that  love  us ;  but  we  lack 
the  quality  of  joyful  benevolence  which  would  enkindle  our 
hearts  for  those  who  are  themselves  unlovely. 

But  let  me  not  spend  the  whole  sermon  on  one  word.    The 
fruit  of  the  Spirit  is  love,  joy,  peace,  ^o??y-s?^^cr«w^ — the  self- 


Christian  Chaeacter.  373 

sacrificing  element  comes  in — the  sinking  of  self,  the  holding 
of  one's  self  a  sacrifice  for  others.  The  fruit  of  the  Spirit  is 
long-sufiering,  gentleness,  goodness,  faith.  If  then,  because 
we  teach  that  true  Christian  character  is  the  result  of  the  in- 
s^Diration  of  the  Holy  Ghost,  men  begin  to  say, "  "We  are  in- 
spired ;  we  are  the  sons  of  God,"  we  at  once  seek  in  them  for 
the  fruits  of  the  Spirit.  If  your  religion  makes  you  self-right- 
eous ;  if  it  makes  you  proud  and  vain ;  if  you  are  censorious 
of  other  people  not  so  good  as  you ;  if  it  makes  you  spiritual 
dilettanti — going  around  in  the  garden  of  the  Lord  sucking 
honey  from  every  flower,  a  mere  honey -bird  in  the  Lord's 
garden — if  this  is  the  fruit  of  your  religion,  you  have  not  the 
evidence  of  possessing  God's  Spirit.  But  if  the  Spirit  of 
God,  working  and  shining  upon  your  spirit,  has  given  pre- 
dominant power  to  the  higher  elements  of  your  higher  na- 
ture, and  if  those  elements  are  producing  in  you  love,  joy, 
peace,  long-sufiering,  gentleness,  and  meekness,  then  you  have 
the  evidence  in  these  fruits  of  the  Spirit  that  the  new  charac- 
ter is  forming,  and  is  already  in  power,  and  is  jaroducing  fruit 
in  you. 

If  this  view  of  the  Christian  scheme  as  it  stands  related  to 
the  human  soul  be  correct,  you  will  see,  in  the  first  place,  the 
distinction  between  a  doctrinal  religion  and  a  Christian  dis- 
position. We  see  also  the  difierence  between  the  road  to  re- 
ligion as  foimd  out  by  the  investigations  of  philosophy  and 
the  road  to  it  as  found  out  by  positive  experience.  One  some- 
times wonders  to  see  the  Apostle  Paul  inveighing  against  the 
philosophies  of  his  day  in  the  manner  in  which  he  did ;  clear- 
ing himself  from  every  imputation  of  being  in  fellowship  with 
it ;  declaring  that  he  expressly  contemplated  it  when  he  went 
forth  upon  his  mission  and  deliberately  determined  that  he 
would  put  it  under  foot,  and  that  he  would  have  nothing  to 
do  with  it.  There  never  was  a  fairer  antithesis  between  re- 
sults that  come  from  moral  intuitions,  and  resialts  that  come 
from  legitimate  philosophical  processes,  than  in  the  case  of 
the  Apostle  Paul     He  declared  that  the  true  religious  life  is 


374  Christian  Character. 

to  Ibe  sought,  not  by  intellectual  processes,  but  is  to  be  at- 
tained by  moral  states  or  intuitions,  and  by  no  other;  and 
that  it  is  the  power  which  springs  from  moral  intuitions 
which  makes  the  cross  of  Christ  the  chosen  and  relied  upon 
means  by  which  to  convert  the  world.  In  other  words,  while 
Greece  had  taken  the  scepti-e  of  understanding,  and  gone 
forth  to  subdue  barbarous  nations,  thereby  to  bring  them  into 
culture,  Paul  took  mightier  weapons — the  heart,  not  the  un- 
derstanding— and  declared  that  with  that  he  would  develop 
a  power  that  should  be  mightier  than  reason.     And  he  did. 

There  is  great  pertinence  in  Paul's  declarations  in  our  own 
time,  for  just  now  the  world  is  running  Greekwise.  I  am  glad 
that  Herbert  Spencer  has  written  his  books ;  I  am  not  sorry 
to  have  them  read.  They  may  unsettle  a  great  many  men, 
but  it  must  needs  be  that  these  things  take  place.  No  great 
changes  are  made  without  great  waste.  We  have  to  go 
through  this  period  of  scientific  investigation  and  of  re-ex- 
amination of  foundations.  Let  it  come ;  but  during  the  pro- 
cess, remember  that  whatever  results  you  reach  by  mere  rea- 
soning come  short  of  the  very  fringe  of  the  edge  of  the  gar- 
ment of  true  religion,  which  expressly  says  that  it  does  not 
belong  in  a  sphere  as  low  as  that.  For  while  reason  deals 
with  things  created,  the  power  of  the  Spirit  of  God  deals  in  a 
sphere  that  is  higher  than  ordinary  creation;  and  all  that 
chemistry,  all  that  theology,  all  that  history  can  reveal,  comes 
far  short  of  tlirowing  any  hght  upon  the  question,  "What  does 
the  Spirit  of  God  do  when  it  comes  into  willmg  contact  with 
the  higher  moral  sensibilities  of  man's  moral  nature  ?  No 
science  has  reasoned  so  high  as  this  question.  It  belongs, 
not  to  the  realm  of  science,  but  to  the  realm  of  experience. 
All  the  fluctuations  that  have  gone  on  in  the  world  for  two 
thousand  years  have  not  unsettled  the  conviction  of  Chris- 
tian men  that  there  is  such  a  thing  as  a  new  life,  and  that 
there  is  such  a  thing,  in  this  new  life,  as  seeing  invisible 
things ;  and  that  in  this  realm  of  invisible  things  there  is 
a  mighty  power — a  power  far  beyond  that  which  belongs  to 


Christian  Character.  375 

any  merely  human  element,  and  which  is  the  characteristic 
and  distinctive  element  of  Christian  life,  namely,  the  power 
which  springs  from  the  impartment  to  our  moral  nature  of 
the  direct  inspiration  of  the  Holy  Spirit.  That  can  not  he 
touched  by  philosophy.  If  this  power  exists,  if  it  makes  you 
more  earnest,  more  benevolent,  more  pure,  more  gentle,  more 
impetuous  in  love ;  if  it  purifies  you,  and  makes  you  radiant 
and  beautiful,  can  any  body  get  rid  of  that  eifect  ?  Let  me 
but  once  paint  a  glowing  picture  like  the  Madonna;  would 
you  criticise  it  by  going  behind  it  to  see  what  the  canvas 
was  made  of,  or  by  examining  the  pigments,  and  inquiring 
how  they  were  compounded  ?  There  is  the  result — a  paint- 
ing, which  stands  at  the  head  of  faces  in  the  whole  history 
of  art.  There  is  one  process  by  which  you  can  meet  reason- 
ing and  skeptical  tendencies  that  can  not  be  gainsaid,  namely, 
produce  in  another  man  a  character  which  represents  God 
among  men,  in  human  form  again,  with  his  power  to  love, 
with  his  self-denying,  self-sacrificing  love,  with  his  gentle- 
ness, his  purity,  his  grace  and  beauty ;  set  forth  that  char- 
acter and  say,  "  There  is  the  evidence  of  religion,"  If 
you  bring  me  an  apple  large  and  beauteous,  and  then  un- 
dertake to  persuade  me  by  any  argument  that  it  is  impos- 
sible that  such  a  fruit  should  have  grown  in  such  a  clime, 
I  answer  that  no  ship  has  touched  this  shore;  here  is  the 
apple,  there  is  the  tree;  there  are  others  like  it  hanging 
on  the  tree,  and  this  apple  has  grown  upon  this  tree.  You 
say  it  is  impossible ;  that  tree  can  not  grow  here ;  the 
season  is  too  short,  the  climate  is  too  cold  for  such  fruit. 
But,  after  all,  is  not  a  tree  full  of  apples  better  than  any 
and  all  physiological  arguments  on  the  face  of  the  earth  ?  I 
do  not  care  what  botanists  may  say.  Show  me  the  tree 
with  the  apples  on  it,  and  I  will  take  the  tree  as  an  argument 
against  them  all.  Show  me  a  man  whose  character  lifts  him 
above  common  men;  whose  head  shine^i  like  a  light-house 
(no  matter  how  he  is  built  at  the  bottom) ;  show  me  a  man 
that  carries  in  him  the  power  of  a  divine  life  (and  no  man  can 


376  Christian  Character. 

mistake  what  that  power  is  when  he  sees  it) — he  is  an  epit- 
ome of  Christianity,  and  I  place  him  as  an  argument  against 
the  intellectual  philosophies  of  any  and  every  man. 

But  the  skeptic  says, "  I  believe  in  Christian  character,  but 
do  not  believe  in  Christ."  My  reply  is.  Reproduce  that  char- 
acter without  this  power,  and  I  will  accept  it  as  an  eifectual 
refutation  of  the  argument.  On  the  other  hand  I  say,  There 
is  this  character,  the  most  resplendent  of  any  known  on  the 
face  of  the  globe ;  a  character  more  beautiful  than  ever  Greek 
made  marble  or  pigment  made  the  human  face  upon  canvas ; 
a  character  embodying  the  attributes  of  the  divine  nature.  I 
point  the  skeptic  to  this  character  and  say.  Let  any  man  at- 
tempt to  build  a  character  like  this  by  faith  in  Christ,  and  by 
trust  and  belief  in  him,  and  he  shall  succeed ;  let  him  attempt 
to  build  one  without  that  faith  and  trust,  and  he  w^ill  go  just 
as  far  as  the  seventh  of  Romans,  and  he  will  not  get  a  step 
farther — not  a  step.  I  defy  any  man  to  get  out  of  the  sev- 
enth of  Romans  into  the  eighth  except  by  that  one  word 
"  Christ."  He  who  attempts  it  is  like  a  leaf  caught  in  the 
eddy  of  a  stream ;  it  whirls  round  and  wants  to  get  down  the 
stream,  but  can  not  go.  The  seventh  of  Romans  is  an  eddy 
in  which  the  conscience  swings  round  and  round  in  eternal 
disquiet  and  dissatisfaction ;  the  eighth  of  Romans  is  the  tal- 
isman through  which  it  receives  the  touch  of  divine  inspira- 
tion, and  is  lifted  above  into  the  realm  of  true  divine  benefi- 
cence. 

Secondly,  we  perceive  here  the  true  test  of  sects  and 
churches. 

Mr.  Jonathan  Edwards  wrote  his  Treatise  on  the  WiU  (one 
of  the  most  extraordinary  pieces  of  human  thought  and  in- 
genuity on  record)  in  a  little  room  not  so  large  as  my  plat- 
form, sitting  in  a  hard,  splint-bottomed  arm-chair,  on  a  pine 
table  of  most  execrable  construction.  Now  suppose  that  a 
school  of  philosophers  should  be  found  quarreling  with  a  man 
that  produces  another  Treatise  on  the  Will  equally  great,  by 
attempting  to  ascertain  whether  he  wrote  it  in  a  room  eight 


Christian  Character.  377 

by  twelve,  whether  he  ^vrote  it  on  a  pine  table,  every  one  of 
whose  legs  creaked,  whether  he  wrote  it  sitting  in  a  splint- 
bottomed  arm-chair,  and  whether  he  wrote  it  on  paper  of  a 
given  age  and  with  a  goose-quill  of  a  given  pattern :  they 
would  resemble  exactly  the  disputes  that  I  see  among 
churches  as  to  whether  this  one  or  the  other  one  has  got  the 
true  religion.  The  room  that  has  a  man  in  it  that  can  turn 
out  a  treatise  like  that  of  Edwards  on  the  Will  is  the  one 
that  is  to  be  honored.  I  care  nothing  about  the  room ;  it  is 
the  Treatise  that  gives  power  to  the  room,  and  not  the  room 
that  gives  power  to  the  Treatise.  There  are  some  men  that 
build  magnificent  churches.  Religion,  they  think,  requires 
that  the  windows  should  be  painted ;  that  the  ceiling  should 
be  frescoed ;  that  the  apostles,  and  the  saints,  and  godly  men 
in  great  clouds  should  look  down  upon  the  worshipers 
through  the  misty  air ;  that  there  should  be  a  certain  order 
of  music  at  one  end,  and  a  certain  order  of  service  at  the 
other.  Do  I  despise  any  of  them  ?  I  care  not  if  there  were 
fifty  times  as  many  such  churches,  if  I  see  coming  out  of 
them  stately  Christian  men.  I  do  not  care  for  the  place 
where  the  man  is  made,  nor  for  the  instruments  employed  in 
making  him.  On  the  other  hand,  I  see  men  and  churches 
'that  disdain  painted  windows ;  that  disdain  frescoes ;  that 
will  not  even  permit  music  in  the  church ;  and  that  despise 
pomp  and  circumstance  as  much  as  pomp  and  circumstance 
despises  simplicity.  Shall  I  go  with  them  ?  If  they  make 
good  men,  I  will  take  the  men,  but  I  do  not  care  for  the  shop 
they  make  them  in.  What  care  I  whether  a  man  is  made  in 
a  Quaker  Church  or  in  an  Episcopal  Church  ?  These  are  all 
shops,  and  the  doctrines  are  tools,  and  the  members  are  mere- 
ly workmen..  I  care  nothing  for  the  shop  if  it  does  not  give 
me  good  work,  whether  the  shop  be  made  of  gold  or  of  clay. 
I  take  the  work,  and  not  the  shop. 

So  in  regard  to  sects.  It  is  time  men  were  done  mousing 
throuo-h  antiquity  to  find  out  doubtful  evidences  of  authen- 
ticity ;  it  is  time  they  put  the  evidence  of  catholicity  and  or- 


378  Christian  Character. 

thodoxy  where  the  apostle  put  it.  "Ye  are  my  epistles," 
said  he,  when  he  wanted  to  authenticate  his  mission.  When 
men  asked  what  authority  he  had,  he  pointed  to  that  holy 
man  or  to  that  holy  woman,  and  said,  There  is  the  testimony 
that  I  am  an  apostle;  my  work  speaks  for  me.  Now  that 
sect  is  most  orthodox  that  makes  the  best  Christians,  and 
that  sect  is  most  heretical  that  makes  the  poorest.  That 
Church  is  nearest  to  God  that  makes  the  most  summer  in  the 
world,  and  that  Church  is  farthest  from  him  that  makes  the 
most  winter.     "  By  their  fruits  ye  shall  know  them." 

This  is  a  good  test  whereby  to  break  down  other  churches, 
but  how  is  it  with  you?  What  is  its  effect  upon  us ?  It  is 
a  great  deal  more  a  matter  of  concern  to  make  this  inquiry 
of  ourselves  than  it  is  to  make  it  of  others.  I  recognize  Chris- 
tians in  the  Roman  Catholic  Church.  I  believe  there  are  a 
great  many  very  worthy  ones  there.  I  accept  men  as  living 
a  true  and  godly  life  if  I  find  them  in  theUniversalist  Church, 
or  in  the  Unitarian  Church,  or  in  the  Swedenborgian  Church, 
or  in  the  High  Episcoj^al  Church,  or  in  the  Low  one.  The 
Low  Episcopal  Church  is  the  bottom  of  the  mountain  where 
things  grow ;  the  High  Episcopal  Church  is  the  top  of  Mount 
Blanc,  A^ery  pure,  very  high,  and  extremely  cold.  I  accept  a 
Christian  wherever  I  find  him,  and  the  evidence  that  he  is  a 
Christian  is  to  be  found,  not  in  his  Church,  but  in  him.  If 
there  is  the  evidence  in  him  that  the  Spirit  of  God  rules  his 
moral  nature,  so  that  he  is  bringing  forth  the  fruit  of  the 
Spirit  regularly  and  always,  I  accept  him  without  a  ques- 
tion as  to  Avhere  he  comes  from.  If  you  ask  me  the  ques- 
tion, "Which  Church  is  most  likely  to  produce  such  mem- 
bers ?"  I  admit  that  here  is  a  fair  ground  for  discussion.  I 
am  not  going  to  enter  into  it  now.  I  think,  however,  that 
the  Congregational  polity  is  most  likely  to  do  it,  and  I  think 
that  my  opinion  is  universally  conceded — with  the  exception 
of  about  nine  tenths  of  Christendom.  Every  body  naturally 
thinks  his  own  children  the  handsomest,  and  every  Church 
thinks  itself  to  be  the  best ;  nevertheless,  there  is  such  a  thing 


Christian  Character.  379 

as  a  dispassionate  and  disinterested  judgment  in  this  matter. 
My  own  judgment  is  that  we  do  some  things  better  than  any 
body  else,  and  some  things  as  bad  as  they  can  be  done.  My 
own  judgment  is  that  there  are  a  great  many  excellences  in 
the  EjDiscopal  Church ;  and  I  see  in  the  Methodist  economy 
some  very  excellent  and  noble  things,  I  see  m  all  the  sects 
some  elements  of  truth  which  make  them  worth  keeping  for 
the  sake  of  those  characteristic  elements.  The  body  of  Christ 
does  not  belong  to  one  Church  or  sect ;  it  is  common  prop- 
erty. Christ  is  only  known  when  you  have  taken  all,  not 
when  you  have  taken  any  one  of  his  characteristics. 

Thirdly.  From  these  views  we  may  learn  the  distinction  be- 
tween morality  and  a  living  Christian  character.  There  has 
been  much  discussion  on  the  power  and  worth  of  morality, 
what  it  is,  and  what  it  amounts  to ;  and  I  confess  that  the 
eagerness  of  most  Christian  churches  to  produce  a  truly  Chris- 
tian type  of  character  has  had  the  effect  of  giving  them  the 
appearance  of  undervaluing  morality.  On  the  other  hand, 
men  have  more  than  made  up  by  giving  to  morality  a  pre- 
ponderant value  which  it  never  deserved  and  which  it  can 
not  maintain. 

What  is  morality  ?  It  is  a  compliance  with  the  moral  cus- 
toms of  the  age  in  which  you  live.  It  is  the  establishment 
of  a  character  according  to  the  average  conception  of  char- 
acter in  the  nation  or  city  where  you  are.  Morality  is  one 
thing  in  New  York ;  it  is  another  thing  in  Boston ;  it  is  an- 
other thing  in  some  mountain  village  in  the  western  part  of 
Massachusetts ;  and  it  is  quite  another  thing  in  Texas.  It 
fluctuates.  Spiritual  religion  is  absolute,  and  does  not  de- 
pend at  all  upon  human  opinion.  It  is  a  quality  that  is 
stamped  upon  the  soul  by  God  himself  It  is  the  highest 
form  of  the  development  of  the  soul  of  man.  Men  some- 
times ask.  Will  morality  save  me  ?  This  is  exactly  as  if  the 
wheat-fields,  when  they  have  grown  three  inches  high,  should 
ask.  Are  we  not  good  wheat  as  far  as  we  go  ?  When  wheat 
is  grass,  it  may  be  on  the  way  toward  wheat,  but  it  is  not 


880  Christian  Character. 

wheat  that  a  man  can  grind  and  eat  until  it  has  outgrown  its 
grassage.  Morality  is  biit  the  beginning.  It  is  virtue  in  the 
germ.  It  is  not  stealing ;  not  swearing ;  not  doing  violence. 
In  short,  it  is  putting  off  the  old  man  and  his  works  without 
putting  on  the  new  man.  It  is  the  negative  form  of  religion. 
It  is  that  part  of  religion  which  exists  in  exclusions,  with  a 
very  moderate  development  of  the  germs  of  right  feeling.  It 
has  no  complete  growth  in  it.  It  has  no  power  within  itself. 
It  has  a  kind  of  ideal  attainment,  but  it  is  an  attainment 
made  possible  only  by  the  helj)  of  the  Holy  Si^irit.  It  is  the 
faint  beginning,  the  rough  outline,  the  charcoal  sketch  of  the 
future.  That  is  morality.  Is  it  not  good?  Certainly  it  is 
good.  Is  it  enough  ?  No,  it  is  not  enough.  It  is  enough  to 
start  on,  but  it  is  not  enough  to  stand  on. 

What  if  a  man  should  take  a  farm  in  the  upper  part  of 
Westchester  County,  where  rocks  and  soil  quarrel  with  each 
other  for  the  supremacy,  and  should  fence  it  in.  He  puts  up 
a  fence  that  keeps  out  all  intruders.  There  lies  the  farm. 
Having  defended  it  against  intruders,  he  goes  every  year  to 
live  off  of  it.  What  does  he  get  ?  Merely  wild  grass  and 
sorrel — nothing  else.  Some  farms  would  bring  a  little  more, 
and  some  still  less  than  that.  That  is  a  hiisbandry  that  an- 
swers to  morality.  What  is  religion?  The  thrifty  farmer 
goes  over  the  field,  and  sees  that,  because  of  the  rocks,  the  sun 
has  no  chance  to  reach  the  soil ;  so  he  digs  out  the  rocks,  and 
removes  them.  He  sees  that  the  ground  is  so  low  and  full  of 
moisture  that  the  sun  and  dew  falling  upon  it  do  no  good,  and 
he  drains  it.  He  sees  that  the  soil  is  light — loose  only  on  the 
surface,  and  he  subsoils  it,  and  makes  the  soil  a  great  deal  deep- 
er. He  sees  that,  after  all  that  he  has  done,  the  soil  is  still  un- 
productive because  there  is  not  much  substance  in  it,  and  so 
he  casts  on  a  superabundant  covering  of  enriching  substances. 
And  after  he  has  thus  fenced  his  farm  to  protect  it  from  the 
cattle,  and  removed  the  rocks  that  the  sun  may  act  upon  the 
soil,  and  drained  away  the  surplus  moisture,  and  subsoiled  it, 
and  filled  it  full  of  fertilizers,  he  plants  the  best  seed  that  he 


Christian  Character.  881 

can  get,  and  has  then  done  his  share.  Then  the  sun  takes 
hold,  and  is  a  midwife  to  every  crop ;  suns  them,  swathes 
them,  nurses  them,  dandles  them,  and  brings  them  up  to  full 
ripeness.  The  soul  is  the  soil,  which,  under  morality,  is  pro- 
ductive only  of  grass  and  sorrel,  but  in  its  regenerated  state 
produces  wheat,  and  corn,  and  grapes,  and  pears,  and  peaches, 
and  apples,  and  flowers  that  are  beautiful  to  the  eye.  That 
is  religion ;  that  is  the  fruit  of  the  Spirit  of  God.  The  man 
that  is  content  with  morality  is  content  with  an  undeveloped 
farm — his  moral  nature.  The  man  that  is  not  content  with 
morality  will  bring  his  moral  nature  to  the  highest  form  of 
spiritual  culture  that  can  be  produced  in  the  human  soul  by 
the  direct  influences  of  the  Holy  Spirit. 

Fourthly.  Let  me  point  you,  in  view  of  this  subject,  to 
the  diflerence  between  what  are  called  experiences  of  relig- 
ion and  what  may  be  called  permanent  religion.  If  character 
is  that  which  God  requires,  then  mere  fluctuations  and  vis- 
ions, mere  joys  and  sorrows,  can  be  regarded  only  as  tran- 
sient experiences.  There  be  many  men  that  have  no  other 
evidence  that  they  are  Christians  than  that  at  some  period 
of  their  lives  they  went  through  very  deep  impressions,  and 
those  impressions  led  them  at  the  time  to  make  certain  resolu- 
tions ;  but  after  that  there  seemed  to  be  no  more  divine  work 
going  on  in  them.  They  remained  substantially  as  they  were. 
Their  character  is  that  which  natural  traits  or  causes  pro- 
duced in  them.  We  find  no  fruits  of  the  SjDirit  in  them. 
There  is  no  evidence  that  a  divine  influence  has  been  super- 
added to  their  moral  characters.  They  do  not  differ  from 
those  that  have  sprung  up  under  the  ordinary  influence  of 
human  society. 

Far  be  it  from  me  to  decry  experiences,  whether  of  sorrow 
or  of  joy ;  I  believe  in  them.  But  experiences  are  not  char- 
acter. 

If  they  lead  to  it,  if  they  are  so  many  steps  on  the  way  to 
it,  they  are  well ;  let  them  continue  to  aid  in  building  up  a 
true  Christian  character.     But  if  there  be  but  occasional 


882  Christian  Character. 

emotions,  they  do  not  amount  to,  or  result  in.  Christian  char- 
acter. You  may  come  to  church,  and  when  the  hymns  are 
suno-,  your  soul  may  thrill  with  joy;  in  prayer  your  soul 
may  melt  in  contrition;  you  may  be  thus  susceptible  to 
all  human  influences ;  you  may  seem  to  live  a  religious  life ; 
you  may  have  religious  sensibility ;  but  you  have  no  evi- 
dence that  you  are  a  Christian  until  there  begins  to  be  in  you 
the  permanent  elements  of  Christian  character.  That  is  what 
Christ  seeks  to  make — a  new  manhood. 

Fifthly.  In  the  light  of  these  truths  we  perceive  the  ut- 
ter inadequacy  of  God's  revelation  in  the  material  world  to 
meet  the  work  that  is  required  to  be  done  to  give  spiritual 
life.  I  believe  that  in  the  work  of  education,  in  the  work  of 
understanding  the  nature  of  the  human  soul,  and  of  elimina- 
ting the  truth  respecting  each  faculty,  and  of  discovering 
wiser  methods  of  presenting  the  truth  to  those  faculties,  sci- 
ence will  yet  have  much  to  do.  I  believe  that  the  Church  it- 
self, through  the  instrumentality  of  science,  is  to  be  made  more 
beneficial,  and  that  it  will  wield  weapons  more  powerful  than 
any  that  have  yet  been  wielded.  I  look,  therefore,  with  favor 
upon  the  fact  that  in  the  external  world  science  is  preparing 
new  materials  and  new  instrumentalities,  and  that  it  is  work- 
ing so  nearly  in  harmony  with  the  Church  of  Christ.  But, 
after  all,  it  is  my  conviction  that  there  are  no  results  flowing 
from  natural  causes  that  may  or  can  supersede  the  fashioning 
efiect  and  the  divine  influence  of  the  Spirit  of  God.  They 
work  together  -wiih  God.  As  science  teaches  the  husband- 
man to  work  in  better  co-operation  with  natural  laws,  so 
we  are  taught  to  work  seeking  a  better  understanding  of  the 
human  soul ;  but  there  never  will  be  such  room  for  skill,  for 
masterly  manipulation,  as  that  the  soul  will  not  need  the  vi- 
talizing influence  of  the  Holy  Spirit. 

Let  us,  then,  dismiss  all  fears  and  all  apprehensions  in  re- 
spect to  the  Church,  and  in  respect  to  the  cause  of  Christ  in 
this  world.  God  takes  care  of  his  own  work.  If  the  Holy 
Ghost  is  shed  abroad,  there  will  be  signal  instances  of  its  ac- 


Christian  Character.  383 

tion.  While  nature  will  more  and  more  unfold  itself;  while 
God,  in  accordance  with  his  august  designs,  will  build  up  a 
fairer  human  society;  while  a  human  conduct,  higher  yet 
and  nobler  yet,  will  join  therewith,  there  will  be  over  all  and 
higher  than  all  that  character  resulting  in  righteousness  by 
the  power  of  the  Holy  Ghost,  which  will  depend,  not  upon 
the  will  of  man,  nor  on  the  flesh,  nor  on  blood,  but  on  the 
j)0wer  of  God  himself. 

Let  me  read  then  again  the  word  of  God  with  which  I 
opened  this  discourse,  and  which  comes  to  us  with  signal 
power : 

"  He  came  unto  his  own,  and  his  own  received  him  not. 
But  as  many  as  received  hun,  to  them  gave  he  power  to  be- 
come the  sons  of  God,  even  to  them  that  believe  on  his  name : 
which  were  bora,  not  of  blood,  nor  of  the  will  of  the  flesh,  nor 
of  the  will  of  man,  but  of  God." 

May  this  divine  birth  be  yours.  May  those  clouds  that 
keep  the  shining  of  the  Sj)irit  of  God  from  your  heart  break 
and  depart.  May  all  those  influences  by  which  God  draws 
near  to  your  soul  to  unlock  its  doors  and  do  his  promised 
work  have  abundant  entrance  to  your  souls ;  may  all  those 
influences  which  lead  you  to  resist,  and  hide  you  from  the 
Spirit  of  God,  pass  away,  and  you  be  induced  to  open  your 
souls  to  him ;  and  as  the  earth  receives  the  returning  sun,  and 
more  and  more  unlocks  to  his  commg  as  he  speeds  more  and 
more  northward,  so  may  it  be  with  you ;  so,  when  God  draws 
near  by  the  power  of  the  Holy  Ghost,  may  you  more  and  more 
rejoice  as  you  feel  the  power  of  his  presence  in  your  souls. 


PRAYER. 


O  thou  that  art  infinitely  merciful,  behold  how  we  walk  in 
darkness.  We  walk  in  darkness,  whilst  thou  dost  abide  in 
eternal  light.  With  thee  is  no  variableness  or  shadow  of 
turning,  but  with  us  all  is  change.  Uncertitudes  hang  over 
us  more  than  we  can  count.  All  our  power  is  in  seemino-. 
If  thou  wert  to  forget  to  look  upon  us,  we  should  perish,  as 


884  Christian  Character. 

frost  perishes,  in  a  moment,  imder  the  sun,  dissolving  and 
passing  away.  For  life  and  breath,  for  every  pulsation,  for 
all  the  strange  and  wonderful  things  that  are  wrought  out  in 
us  hy  the  wisdom  of  God,  for  all  that  we  think  and  feel  for 
hope  and  for  aspiration,  we  are  dependent  upon  thee.  We 
are  helpless.  We  hang  upon  thy  remembrance.  Thy  faith- 
fulness is  our  only  resource.  BetAveen  us  and  annihilation 
is  only  God.  We  rejoice  that  thou  art  our  surety,  and  art 
sufficient.  Because  thou  livest,  we  shall  live  also.  In  the 
greatness  of  thy  nature  thou  dost  comprehend  all  thy  crea- 
tures. It  is  possible  for  thee  to  think  of  all,  to  bear  all  in 
their  endless  conditions,  and,  as  they  move  toward  thee,  to 
gather  them  in  thine  inhnite  love,  and  house  them  in  heaven. 
Thou  hast  prepared  thrones,  and  crowns,  and  sceptres,  and 
harps,  and  palms,  and  robes  for  those  that  are  washed  in  the 
blood  of  redemption,  and  that  come  up  to  be  kings  and  priests 
before  God.  We  throw  a^vay  our  doubts ;  we  throw  away 
all  over-curious  questions  of  things  beyond  our  reach.  It  is 
in  tliyself  that  our  souls  desire  to  believe.  We  lean  toward 
thy  word  and  its  precious  promises.  A  man  of  our  counsel 
it  is  indeed.  It  is  our  guide.  It  is  a  staff.  We  lean  upon 
it  in  a  hard  and  rough  way.  It  is  to  us  a  liglit  in  a  dark 
place.  It  shines  into  that  darkest  of  all  places,  where  death 
reigned,  and  fear  held  empire,  and  drove  men  from  the  grave 
w^ith  dreadings  and  tremblings.  Now  into  that  portal  pour 
the  beams  of  thy  light.  Thy  truth  has  dispelled  the  dark- 
ness ;  tliere  is  no  death,  and  all  terrors  are  gone ;  and  where 
men  beheld  a  pit  of  gloom,  and  shuddered  as  they  looked 
upon  the  phantom  shapes  of  terror,  we  behold  the  bright  and 
pearly  gate,  radiant  with  iniimagined  glory,  standing  open  to 
let  us  througli ;  and  cares  drop  off,  and  sorrows  cease,  and  all 
the  burdens  and  imperfections  of  our  mortal  life  are  left  be- 
liind.  Parting  from  the  world,  and  reaching  immortality,  we 
stand  in  our  spiritual  nature  beholding  God,  rejoicing  in  his 
ineffable  love,  rising  under  the  touches  of  his  soul,  and  going 
on  in  infinite  progression  forever  and  forever.  For  bringing 
such  precious  truth  to  light,  O  Lord  Jesus  ;  for  making  us  the 
heirs  of  such  glorious  promises ;  for  giving  thy  Spirit,  that  we 
might  be  able  to  attain  unto  all  those  things  which  thou  hast 
revealed  to  us,  we  render  thee  most  hearty  thanks.  And  if 
at  last  we  should  prove  conquerors,  it  will  be  tlirough  Him 
that  loved  us.  If  we  endure  to  the  end,  it  will  not  be  by  our 
virtue  or  by  our  firmness,  but  by  thy  fidelity.  And  to  all 
the  joys  of  heaven  Avill  tliis  be  added — that  it  is  God-given. 
Every  rapture,  every  gratitude,  every  love,  and  every  in- 


Christian  Character.  385 

flection  of  each  blessed  attribute  of  our  ransomed  souls  will 
be  of  thee,  and  will  bring  us  nearer  to  thee.  We  throw  our 
arms  about  thee,  O  blessed  Promiser,  and  beseech  thee  to  be 
faithful  to  each  of  us  in  all  the  way  of  life.  Succor  those  that 
are  in  peril.  Rescue  those  that  are  tempted  more  than  they 
are  able  to  bear.  Dear  Jesus,  help  the  helpless ;  comfort  the 
afllicted;  shine  upon  the  darkened;  soothe  the  troubled; 
give  peace  to  the  bestormed.  Do  thy  blessed  work  in  the 
midst  of  thy  people,  that  they  may  acclaim  their  gratitude, 
and  that  thy  name  may  be  blessed  in  the  great  congregation. 

Grant  that  as,  one  by  one,  we  are  enlightened  and  cheer- 
ed ;  as  we  are  rescued  and  established ;  as  we  are  lifted 
through  old  sins  to  new  virtues ;  as  we  find  ourselves  draw- 
ing near  to  the  holy  and  heavenly,  we  may  bear  witness  to 
thy  grace.  May  we  be  Avitnesses  of  Christ,  and  honor  his 
name,  by  testifying  what  he  has  done  for  our  souls. 

We  thank  thee  for  this  long,  bright  day.  How  full  hath  it 
been  of  thy  divine  light !  How  full  hath  it  been  of  sweet  and 
blessed  thoughts  of  God  and  immortality  !  O  what  pledges 
dost  thou  give  us !  How  sweet  is  their  memorial  and  their 
record !  May  they  bear  something  from  us  to  thee,  and  not 
go  out  in  darkness  and  in  night.  And  may  all  that  we  do  be 
Avell-pleasing  in  thy  sight. 

And  grant,  when  all  our  Sabbaths  on  earth  are  ended,  that 
we  may  find  rest.  There  is  a  rest  that  remaineth  for  the  peo- 
ple of  God — else,  where  are  our  beloved  ?  Thitherward  we 
have  sent  many.  Escaped  from  our  cries  and  strong-holding 
— escaped  as  a  bird  that  flies  and  rises  rejoicing,  they  have 
gone.  They  rest  with  thee.  Our  thoughts  pursue  them. 
Our  hearts  find  them.  Our  eyer:  shall  see  them  no  more  for- 
ever; but  we  are  tending  thitherward.  We  follow  faster 
than  we  know,  and  ere  long  one  and  another  of  us  shall  stand 
in  Zion  and  before  God.  And  when  there  we  are  joined  to 
all  whom  we  love,  and  to  him  who  loved  us  and  gave  him- 
self for  us,  we  will  give  the  praise  of  our  salvation  to  the 
Father,  the  Son,  and  the  Spirit.     Amen. 

n.— B  B 


XVIII. 


€\)t  Inntiii  Snrornntian, 


Preached  in  Plymouth  Church,  Brooklyn,  Sabbath  evening, 

T}/yr/7ttt1ir"i/'     r»  r>  rf       t  Q  A  *t 


December  2  2(1,  1867. 


The  Second  I :n"cae nation. 


' '  And  hath  put  all  things  under  his  feet,  and  gave  him  to  be  the  head  over 
all  things  to  the  Church,  which  is  liis  body,  the  ftdlness  of  him  that  fiU- 
eth  all  in  aU."— Eph.,  i.,  22,  23. 

This  passage,  if  you  remember  the  context — and  surely  no 
Christian  man  that  ever  read  it  forgets  it — is  a  glowing  and 
rapturous  recital  of  the  results  of  Christ's  incarnation,  his 
holy  life  and  obedience,  his  sufferings  and  his  death.  The 
apostle  prays  for  his  brethren  that  God  will  give  them  the 
spirit  of  wisdom,  that  the  eyes  of  their  understandmg  may 
be  enlightened,  that  they  "  may  know  what  is  the  hope  of  his 
calling,  and  what  the  riches  of  the  glory  of  his  inheritance  in 
the  saints,  and  what  is  the  exceeding  greatness  of  his  power 
to  us-ward  who  believe,  according  to  the  working  of  his 
mighty  power  which  he  wrought  in  Christ  when  he  raised 
him  from  the  dead,  and  set  him  at  his  own  right  hand  in  the 
heavenly  places,  far  above  all  princi23ality,  and  power,  and 
might,  and  dominion,  and  every  name  that  is  named,  not  only 
in  this  world,  but  also  in  that  which  is  to  come ;  and  hath 
put  all  things  under  his  feet,  and  gave  him  to  be  the  head 
over  all  things  to  the  Church,  which  is  his  body,  the  fullness 
of  him  that  filleth  all  in  all." 

So  that  there  is  not  only  this  retrospect  of  the  glorification 
of  Christ  in  his  own  person,  but  a  glowing  prophecy  of  a  sec- 
ond and  yet  more  glorious  incarnation,  of  Christ.  There  was 
a  first  coming,  and  there  is  to  be  a  second  coming  of  the 
Savior.  He  is  supreme  in  heaven.  He  is  also  to  be  supreme 
on  earth.    It  is  something  yet  to  come.     For  all  things  are 


890  The  Second  Incarnation. 

to  be  put  under  his  feet.  Not  put  under  his  feet  as  held  by 
absolute  j)Ower,  but  brought  into  willing  subjection.  This  is 
language  boiTowed  from  warfare,  but  translated  into  moral 
thought.  There  is  to  be  the  subjugation  to  Christ  of  all  the 
elements  of  human  nature  and  human  society.  The  world, 
its  population,  its  organizations,  every  element  that  can  be 
developed  from  the  great  laws  of  physical  nature  and  of  hu- 
man life,  are  yet  to  be  perfectly  subdued,  and  put  under  the 
complete  control  and  inspiration  of  the  Lord  Jesus  Christ. 

When  it  is  declared  that  the  Church  is  yet  to  fill  all  things, 
that  the  whole  world  is  to  be  subject  to  it,  and  that  Christ  is 
to  be  the  head  of  it,  I  do  not  understand  it  to  be  the  Church 
as  represented  to  us  by  its  mere  organization,  I  understand 
it  to  be  the  Church  of  the  human  race — the  great  Church  of 
the  univei-sal  humanity.  Christ  is  the  head  of  all  who  are  in 
soul  and  mind  vitally  influenced  by  him,  just  as  the  body  is 
influenced  by  the  brain.  There  is  no  part  of  the  human  body 
that  is  not  dominated  by  the  brain.  It  is  the  controlling 
centre.  The  blood,  the  nerves,  the  tissues,  the  secretions,  the 
very  substance-matter  of  bone  and  muscle,  all  are  directly,  as 
well  as  indirectly,  influenced  by  the  nerve-centre — the  great 
centre  of  life  and  being,  so  that  there  is  no  part  of  the  human 
body  that  is  not  controlled  by  the  brain.  And  the  whole 
world  is  yet  to  be  as  perfectly  controlled  by  the  mind  and 
will  of  Christ,  as  the  human  body  is  now  controlled  by  the 
mind  and  will  of  the  individual.  The  Church  is  yet  to  rep- 
resent the  race ;  and  that  whole  race  is  to  move  as  obedient- 
ly, as  instinctively,  as  spiritually  and  refinedly  as  the  whole 
body  of  a  cultivated  man  moves  obedient  to  the  cultivated 
brain, 

Christ  is  to  fill  all  with  himself— all  governments ;  all  laws ; 
all  policies  under  the  government ;  all  commercial  and  indus- 
ti-ial  organizations ;  all  societies  ;  all  circles ;  all  households ; 
all  individuals.  All  are  to  be  filled  with  the  mind,  and  will, 
and  spirit  of  the  Head ;  and  Christ  is  to  be  the  brain  of  the 
whole  world.     In  other  words,  all  physical  economies  and 


The  Second  Incarnation.  891 

civil  organizations,  just  as  much  as  spiritual  economies  and 
religious  organizations,  are  to  be  absolutely  filled  and  dom- 
inated by  him. 

This  is  what  I  call  the  second  incarnation.  It  is  the  mjec- 
tion,  as  the  first  incarnation  was  the  lapse,  as  it  were,  into 
the  human  body,  of  the  mind  and  will  of  Christ — the  divine 
Christ,  subjecting  him  to  the  law  of  matter,  to  its  limitations 
and  its  infirmities,  as  we  are  controlled  by  the  physical  laws 
which  surround  us.  So  there  is  to  be  a  more  glorious  mcar- 
nation,  by  which  the  sum  total  of  the  globe  itself,  and  all  its 
members,  are  to  be  gloriously  filled  full  of  the  mind,  and  feel- 
ing, and  will,  and  disposition  of  Christ.  As  one  little  body 
bore  about  his  sj^irit,  so  this  greater  body,  the  comprehensive 
race  and  the  globe,  is  to  bear  about  in  it  the  mind  and  will 
of  God ;  and  every  thing  is  to  move  harmonious  from  pole  to 
pole,  and  round  and  round  the  world.  The  whole  world  is  to 
be  as  perfectly  harmonious  as  the  whole  body  is  harmonious, 
under  the  control  of  an  intelligent,  healthy,  right-minded 
man. 

This  is  poetry  indeed,  but  it  is  the  poetry  of  prophecy. 
It  is  the  ideal  of  progress.  It  is  that  bright  concej)tion  to- 
ward which,  whether  men  know  it  or  not,  they  are  certainly 
drifting  or  steering.  Some  steer  and  some  drift,  according 
as  they  go  voluntarily  or  involuntarily.  By  agencies  that 
men  understand  to  be  working  toward  that  result,  by  others 
that  men  have  no  idea  are  so  working,  and  by  yet  others  that 
seem  to  be  working  against  it,  the  world  is  moving  toward 
this  grand  consummation.  When  that  time  comes,  Christ 
will  fill  all  things  with  himself  That  is,  there  will  be  a 
complete  introduction  of  the  mind  and  will  of  God  into  the 
whole  organization  of  society,  into  the  whole  procedure  of 
business,  into  the  whole  flow  of  social  life,  into  the  personality 
of  each  individual  of  the  human  race. 

The  original  incarnation  of  the  Savior  has  not  been  too 
much,  but  only  too  exclusively  considered.  It  has  been  as- 
sumed that  it  was  the  only  one.    Though  it  was  greater  than 


392  The  Second  Incarnation. 

^ye  can  imagine,  and  more  glorious  than  it  is  in  the  jjower  of 
man  to  depict,  yet  there  is  to  be  a  second  incarnation  even 
more  glorious,  that  has  scarcely  been  considered. 

Still  reflecting  upon  the  first  and  minor  incarnation,  let  us 
turn  toward  that  other  and  major  one  that  is  taking  place, 
and  is  to  take  place  to  the  end. 

Christ  was  born  into  the  world  through  and  under  the 
ministration  of  natural  law.  He  did  not  hover,  a  spirit,  like 
another  star,  upon  the  globe.  He  subjected  himself  to  the 
control  of  matter  and  of  the  laws  of  society.  He  took  upon 
himself  flesh,  with  all  the  infirmities,  limitations,  and  physical 
ills  which  belong  to  it.  And  I  take  it  that  the  whole  j)hys- 
ical  condition  of  the  human  race  corresponds  to  Christ's  body. 
When  his  spirit  was  wrapj^ed  in  it,  incarnated,  he  grew  in 
stature.  He  was  born  an  infant,  a  babe ;  he  grew  to  be  a 
young  man;  he  ripened  into  full  manhood.  He  did  not 
spring  into  life  as  a  spark  struck  springs  into  place  instant- 
ly. Pie  came  in  at  the  minimum,  and  subjected  himself  to 
all  the  laws  of  unfolding  and  progress — the  physical  laws  un- 
der which  all  men  are  shaj^ed,  reared,  and  ripened. 

In  the  progress  of  this  great  second  incarnation  of  which  I 
have  been  speaking,  the  body  of  Christ  is  the  world,  the  race. 
There  is  to  be  a  period  of  jihysical  ripeness.  We  are  goino- 
through  all  those  successive  stages  which  precede  the  final 
development.  I  connect  the  material  globe  intimately  with 
Christianity.  I  connect  all  those  processes  by  which  society 
builds,  originates,  constructs,  invents,  and  develops,  by  which 
wealth  is  produced,  by  which  comfort,  leisure,  information, 
power  of  every  description  are  gained — all  these  I  connect 
with  the  purpose  of  God  in  Christ  Jesus.  'Nov  do  I  believe 
that  this  world  will  ever  be  converted  to  Christ  until  its 
physical  conditions  are  dominated  by  Christ.  I  do  not  be- 
lieve that  any  power  that  is  given  to  the  ministry,  nor  any 
fidelity  that  is  given  to  laymen,  nor  any  diligence  that  is 
given  to  parents,  nor  any  revivals  of  religion,  will  ever  be 
able  to  make  progress  against  the  evolution  of  natural  laws 


The  Second  Incarnation.  393 

by  which  so  large  a  part  of  the  globe  fail  to  be  in  body  what 
they  were  created  to  be.  But  I  believe  that  the  progress  of 
the  Gospel  means  such  a  knowledge  of  the  laws  of  body  and 
material  conditions  in  this  life  as  shall  make  the  whole  course 
of  nature  work  for  Christianity.  There  shall  come  a  time, 
I  believe,  Avhen  all  unhealth  shall,  as  it  were,  cease.  Now 
there  are  thousands  and  hundreds  of  thousands  born  into 
life  in  idiocy;  there  are  uncounted  numbers  born  crippled, 
bearing  through  life  a  body  of  wretchedness  coiled  up  in 
various  distortion.  There  are  multitudes  born  with  such 
unbalance  of  faculties  as  that  the  problem  of  their  life  con- 
sists in  simply  resisting  evil  and  maintaining  a  bare  exist- 
ence of  good.  There  are  men  whose  strongest  native  fac- 
ulties or  tendencies  are  basilar  and  animal.  They  are  not 
responsible  for  any  such  facilities  for  development  as  those 
who  are  born  with  high  moral  and  intellectual  endowments. 
Nor  do  I  believe  that  the  Gospel  of  Christ  is  to  contend  for- 
ever against  these  terrific  inequalities.  Why?  Because  I 
hnovo  that  the  God  who  revealed  the  word  revealed  the 
world ;  and  as  he  has  written  in  the  one  his  law  for  volun- 
tary conduct,  so  in  the  other  he  has  written  his  law  of  invol- 
untary education.  The  law  of  descent,  spoken  of  as  early  as 
the  time  of  Moses,  by  which  alike  the  sins  and  the  virtues  of 
parents  are  transmitted  to  their  children,  runs  through  races 
and  societies.  By  it  men  may  be  bred  to  health  and  away 
from  disease.  Shall  we  forever  give  up  this  right  hand  of 
God's  art,  this  skillful,  fashioning  hand  of  his  architect,  to 
the  uses  of  the  herds  and  beasts  of  the  field  ?  Will  there 
never  be  intelligence  so  that  more  and  more  men  shall  avail 
themselves  of  this  divine  economy  by  which  life  shall  be  per- 
petuated in  the  lines  of  health  rather  than  in  the  lines  of 
sickness  ?  Now  paralytics  are  produced  from  paralytics ;  in- 
sanity is  inherited  from  the  insane ;  drunkenness  perpetuates 
itself  through  the  veins  of  drunkards'  children.  Wrong  tend- 
encies become  transmissible,  as,  on  the  other  hand,  right  tend- 
encies are  transmissible.     And  the  time  is  coming  when  the 


394  The  Second  Incarnation. 

Church  is  not  only  to  train  the  child  in  the  admonition  of  the 
Lord,  but  when  he  is  to  be  born  in  conditions  favorable  to  re- 
lio-ious  instruction.  It  will  by-and-by  be  recognized  a  sin 
and  a  shame  for  men  to  marry  without  a  wise  consideration 
of  those  divine  laws  which  lead  to  physical  health.  It  is  a 
sin  for  a  man,  if  he  but  knew  it,  to  go  on  filling  the  world 
with  disease,  with  malformation  and  ill-adjusted  mental  qual- 
ities. Nor  will  this  world  ever  be  occui^ied  and  pervaded 
by  the  divine  Spirit  till  it  is  preceded  by  this  growth  of  the 
body ;  until  these  great  fundamental  laws,  written  before 
Sinai  spoke — written  in  the  nature  of  things  long  before  Cal- 
vary spoke,  and  needing  no  other  interpretation  than  the 
groans  of  victims  made  manifest  every  where,  in  hospitals,  in 
houses  of  sickness,  in  travailing,  groaning,  perishing  millions 
— until  these  great  primal  laws,  by  which  the  body  of  the 
world  is  to  be  constructed  for  righteousness,  are  understood 
and  obeyed.  If  a  man  be  poetical,  we  never  marvel  that 
some  of  his  children  are  poetical.  We  marvel  if  they  are 
not.  If  a  man  be  a  musician,  we  expect  that  his  children 
will  sing.  If  a  man  be  noble  and  valiant,  men  exclaim  if  his 
children  are  not  so.  And  the  expectation  is  founded  upon 
the  structui-e  of  nature.  We  shall  yet  learn  that  moral  qual- 
ities as  well  as  mental,  virtues  as  well  as  sins,  are  transmissi- 
ble from  generation  to  generation. 

This  is  not  the  time  for  me  to  undertake  to  explain  what 
is  this  great  system  of  law.  But  it  exists ;  and  I  believe 
that  religious  teachers  must  yet  turn  their  attention  to  this 
subject,  and  that  there  must  yet  be  a  growth  of  the  body 
which  is  favorable  to  religious  growth.  Science  is  to  bow 
down,  and  religion  is  to  be  subserved  by  physical  law.  The 
way  of  the  Lord  is  to  be  cast  up,  and  is  to  be  prepared,  and 
we  are  not  forever  going  to  take  men  after  they  have  been 
born  with  a  physical  predisjoosition  to  evil,  or  after  they  have 
been  badly  cultured  and  confirmed  in  evil  habits.  We  are 
not  forever  going  to  take  them  late  in  life,  after  they  have 
become  bad  men,  and  turn  them  about  to  make  Christians  of 


The  Second  Incarnatiok.  895 

them,  barely  saving  them  in  the  future  state.  There  will  a 
time  come  when  we  are  to  build  up  society  from  the  begin- 
ning with  well-born  and  Christianly  educated  men;  when 
men  early  in  life  shall  give  tokens  of  a  sanctified  conscience, 
and  of  the  joy,  and  enthusiasm,  and  beauty  of  a  noble  life  in 
a  noble  body,  fired  and  filled  with  inspirations  of  honor.  And 
this  shall  be  true,  not  of  single  individuals  merely,  but  of 
households,  and  of  communities,  and  of  nations.  The  time 
will  come  when  the  sun,  marching  round  the  globe,  shall  not 
see  a  cripple,  nor  turn  his  face  away  from  one  man  born  sick. 
Not  in  your  day;  not  in  mine;  not  in  the  next  generation. 
We  have  a  great  while  to  wait  for  that.  That  is  the  con- 
summate blossom.  That  is  one  of  the  fruits  that  come  last. 
It  is  autumnal  in  the  great  year  of  time. 

Not  only  was  Christ  born  into  the  body,  and  subject  to 
the  laws  of  the  body,  as  again  Christ  is  to  be  born  into  the 
body  of  the  world,  and  influenced  by  it — subject  and  con- 
trolling at  the  same  time — but  Christ  grew  in  wisdom.  In 
other  words,  he  entered  into  the  unfolding  series.  Nothing 
can  be  more  certam  than  that  this  is  the  economy  of  life. 
Nothing  is  more  certain  than  that  it  is  declared  to  be  so  by 
the  Savior.  The  kmgdom  of  God  is  likened  unto  a  grain  of 
mustard -seed,  which  is  the  smallest  of  all  seeds  when  it  is 
planted,  but  which,  when  it  has  grown,  is  a  tree  in  whose 
branches  the  birds  of  the  air  rest.  Science  at  last,  tardily, 
is  declaring  to  ns,  in  blessed  conimentary,  the  full  meaning 
of  this — the  unfolding,  the  developing  series  of  creation.  Our 
Savior  came  into  the  world ;  and  as  he  was  to  be  human,  it 
was  necessary  that  he  should  be  subject,  also,  to  this  unfold- 
ing, developing  jDrocess.  And  it  is  recorded  that  he  grew  in 
wisdom  as  well  as  in  stature. 

A  correspondency  there  will  be  in  the  greater  incarnation. 
There  is.  There  has  been.  Men  have  never  received,  in  one 
sense,  a  full  revelation.  They  have  only  received  the  seeds 
of  revelation.  They  have  been  taught, "Thou  shalt  love;" 
but  love  is  only  a  seed.     The  impulse  is  there.     Every  im- 


896  The  Second  Incarnation". 

pulse  necessary  for  the  formation  of  a  moral  subject  under  a 
moral  government  is  given  to  man.  When  a  man  is  bom 
his  faculties  are  there,  just  like  so  many  masses  of  paint  on  a 
painter's  palette.  There  is  blue,  red,  green,  all  in  lumj^s  of 
pigment.  Now  there  are  j)ictures  in  those  paints,  but  they 
are  to  be  fashioned.  Faculty  is  mere  pigment  with  a  certain 
color,  but  Christianity  is  the  picture  that  men  make.  Men 
are  born  with  certain  tendencies ;  with  the  sentiments  of  con- 
science and  of  hope ;  with  the  feelings  of  love,  and  fear,  and 
reverence.  But  these  are  undeveloped.  Men  seem  to  think 
that  love  is  a  single  heart-throb.  Love  possesses  infinite 
gradations,  and  complexities,  and  relations ;  and  when  men 
begin  to  exercise  the  feelings,  they  understand  but  a  few  of 
these.  They  are,  by  experience,  to  unfold  the  feeling ;  that 
feeling  is  to  take  hold  on  their  life ;  that  life  is  mixed  with 
other  lives ;  and  so  ten  thousand  questions  are  to  arise,  in 
actual  experience,  from  the  development  of  this  feeling  of 
love. 

It  is  supposed  that  justice  is  a  simple  quality.  It  is  one  of 
the  most  complex,  perplexing,  recondite,  and  unknown  of 
qualities.  We  know  what  justice  is  in  some  things,  in  certain 
low  relations,  as  between  man  and  man.  It  has  been  estab- 
lished by  custom  in  some  cases,  and  by  law  in  others ;  but 
the  world  had  to  grow  a  great  while  before  it  could  know 
what  is  just  under  what  now  seems  very  simple  circumstan- 
ces. As  circumstances  change,  and  questions  become  more 
complex,  it  becomes  more  difficult  to  tell  what  justice  is. 
Justice  itself  becomes  composite  as  it  becomes  mixed  with 
taste,  and  love,  and  other  elements.  There  is  a  vast  litera- 
ture to  it.  As  the  alphabet  is  simple  in  each  letter,  but  is 
the  father  of  an  infinite  literature,  so  the  combination  of 
these  simple  qualities  becomes  voluminous  in  possibilities. 

Now  this  is  a  matter  which  the  world  has  never  been 
taught  by  any  revelation.  The  world  has  been  left  to  find 
out  what  is  pure,  and  high,  and  true ;  what  is  good,  what  bet- 
ter, what  best.    The  world  was  not  told  what  things  were 


The  Second  Incarnation.  897 

tasteful.  For  ages  men  have  died,  and  lain  down  upon  the 
very  plant  which,  if  they  had  known  and  plucked,  would 
have  cured  them,  and  yet  there  was  no  whisper  from  above 
by  which  they  were  enlightened  respecting  it,  from  the  be- 
ginning to  the  end  of  their  life.  There  is  no  nurse,  no  phy- 
sician, no  revelation  that  teaches  such  things.  Men  have 
gone  groping  homely  and  coarse  through  life,  with  the  means 
of  refinement  close  at  hand,  and  there  has  been  no  disclos- 
ure of  them.  Their  discovery  is  a  part  of  growth.  Men  were 
born  with  faculties  capable  of  combinations,  and  evolvements, 
and  infinite  complexities,  but  what  were  the  benefits  to  be 
derived  from  those  elementary  faculties  they  themselves  had 
to  find  out.  Time  had  to  pass.  The  world,  as  it  were,  had 
to  go  through  its  childliood  and  its  youth  into  its  manhood, 
under  the  supervision  of  Providence  and  of  a  moral  dispensa- 
tion, but  there  was  a  tendency  to  develoj)  higher  and  higher 
conceptions  of  every  one  of  the  cardinal  elements  that  corre- 
spond to  the  attributes  of  God.  For  we  are  but  sparks  from 
the  great  parent,  and  our  faculties  are  equivalents  in  us  of 
the  divine  -attributes. 

Men  are  to  leani,  then,  the  laws  under  which  they  are  born, 
physically,  socially,  and  morally ;  and  the  world,  as  a  whole, 
is  to  find  out  gradually  how  to  incarnate  the  several  ele- 
ments of  truth,  of  justice,  and  of  honor. 

I  believe  that  the  time  is  to  come  when  every  government 
on  this  globe  shall  reproduce,  in  a  more  perfect  form  than 
now,  the  great  principles  of  divine  love  and  divine  mercy ; 
when  the  whole  system  of  law  that  exists  under  governments 
shall  be  elevated,  and  made  nobler,  and  finer,  and  more  efli- 
cacious ;  this  is  a  part  of  the  process  of  the  second  incarna- 
tion of  God,  the  injection  of  the  divine  Spirit  into  law  and  de- 
velopment in  society,  where  there  is  so  much  need  of  fidelity, 
so  much  need  of  manliness,  so  mvich  need  of  truth,  so  much 
need  of  every  thing  that  is  humanizing.  I  believe  that  in 
this  great  realm  there  is  to  be  the  pervasive  influence  of 
Christ's  spirit.     He  is  to  fill  all  things. 


398  The  Second  Incarnation. 

What  or  who  now  own  governments  ?  The  passions ;  av- 
arice ;  pride ;  ambition ;  self-interest ;  hatred ;  cruelty.  These 
own  the  great  organizations  of  society.  Who  owns  New 
York  ?  The  devil !  Where  can  you  find  more  than  there 
incarnated  the  essential  spirit  of  self-seeking  and  grasping 
selfishness?  Where  can  you  find  the  will  and  the  whole 
machinery  of  the  community  more  intensely  working,  not  for 
justice,  equality,  and  perfect  happiness,  but  for  purposes  of 
guile  and  selfishness  ? 

Going  from  the  city  government  to  the  state  government, 
time  and  experience  have  compell-ed  laws  to  work  for  the 
government  of  the  whole.  But  look  at  the  special  organiza- 
tion. Read  the  thoughts  of  men  that  preside.  Go  into  the 
councils  of  men  that  caucus.  Take  the  mind  and  the  will  of 
men  that  control  afiairs.  What  is  it?  Nobler  conscience? 
higher  purity  ?  clearer  philanthropy  ?  These  words  are  foot- 
balls of  ridicule.  What  is  it  that  they  tell  you  when  you  in- 
troduce your  thought  of  a  nobler  organization  and  a  nobler 
administration  ?  "  Why,  you  are  a  inan  of  theories ;  you  are  a 
doctrinaire.  Human  nature  is  stubborn  stuff.  While  you  are 
among  men,  you  must  be  as  other  men,  and  deal  as  they  do." 

Now  there  is  a  time  coming  when  governments,  in  all  their 
laws  and  policies,  and  in  all  their  officers,  shall  tend  upAvard, 
and  not  forever  doMTiward.  Thus  far  on  the  earth  the  bot- 
tom of  the  brain  has  had  the  advantage.  The  time  is  coming 
when  the  top  of  the  brain  shall  have  supremacy.  The  time 
is  coming  when  purity  is  to  be  moue  popular  than  impurity. 
To-day,  they  that  attempt  to  reclaim  men  from  inordinate 
passions,  that  attempt  to  clean  the  Augean  stables  in  New 
York,  are  regarded  as  hideous  and  hateful  meddlers.  When 
the  reformer  attempts  to  check  vice,  he  is  met  with  the  same 
outcry  that  met  his  Mtister, "  Art  thou  come  to  torment'  us 
before  our  time  ?"  Men  still  cry  "  Peace,  peace,"  for  wicked- 
ness ;  but  tlie  time  is  to  come  when  magistrates,  when  gov- 
ernments, when  laws  and  their  administration,  when  policies, 
yea,  and,  strange  as  it  may  sound  to  you,  when  j!?ariies  shall 


The  Second  Incarnation.  399 

seek  moral  elevation — yea,  when  they  shall  be  imbued  and 
filled  with  the  siDirit  of  Christ,  just  as  the  human  body  is 
filled  full  of  the  vibrating  life-givmg  flood. 

Will  not  that^be  the  millennium  ?  You  may  think  it  is  fan- 
tasy. It  is  jDoetry  now,  but  it  will  be  fact  yet.  For  there 
is  to  be  a  second  great  mcarnation ;  and  as  the  spirit  divine 
filled  the  body  of  Christ,  and  filled  it  full,  so  that  great  body 
which  is  the  Church,  which  is  the  whole  human  race,  is  yet 
to  be  filled  full  of  him  who  filleth  all  thino-s  with  all  thino-s. 

And  what  a  day  that  will  be  when  all  the  great  agencies 
of  society  shall  be  working  one  way !  Consider  for  a  mo- 
ment what  will  be  the  rapidity  of  life  when  the  declaration 
is  fulfilled  that  the  child  shall  he  a  hundred  years  old ;  or,  in 
other  words,  shall  know  in  early  life  as  much  as  the  old  man 
now  knows.  The  child  of  the  Sabbath-school  knows  to-day 
more  about  life  than  the  priest  did  in  the  time  of  Henry  VIII. 
Every  child  in  the  Sunday-school  knows  oh  many  important 
themes  as  much,  and  even  more,  than  did  venerable  bishops 
five  hundred  years  ago.  The  child  of  the  ordinary  common 
school  knows  more  secrets  than  Roger  Bacon.  The  sages  of 
the  past,  that  swept  over  a  few  books,  and  maintained  their 
secrets,  and  died  without  disclosing  them,  could  not  have 
stood  an  examination  before  a  common  village  school-mis- 
tress of  to-day.  But  the  time  is  coming  when  men  shall  be, 
as  it  were,  born  a  hundred  years  old ;  when  the  elements  of 
knowledge  will  be  reduced  to  such  forms  that  men  will  take 
them  in  at  the  earliest  periods  of  life ;  and  that  which  has 
been  the  sum  total  of  the  world's  striving  will  be  the  cap- 
ital on  which  men  will  begin  to  trade  in  the  great  mental 
economy. 

The  conditions  of  life  will  all  be  changed.  Hitherto  the 
world  has  carried  forward  a  wretched  poj)ulation — wretch- 
edly circumstantial.  See  how  they  take  emigrants  across 
the  sea.  They  huddle  them  together  in  vessels  in  which  ev- 
ery condition  of  health  and  comfort  is  disregarded,  and  where 
oftentimes  there  break  out  the  measles,  the  fever,  the  cholera, 


400  The  Second  Incarnation. 

till  the  ship  becomes  a  perfect  lazar-house,  a  floating  hospital. 
So  the  world  has  hitherto  carried  its  unwashed  crew.  But 
the  time  is  coming  when  the  wonderful  economies,  the  mar- 
velous laws  for  nourishing  and  strengthening  man,  which 
have  been  unknown,  and  the  want  of  which  has  made  the 
world  travail  in  pain  until  now,  will  be  discovered,  organ- 
ized, and  made  available  at  the  beginning  of  life.  All  men 
will  come  into  life  with  better  opj^ortunities,  physically,  men- 
tally, morally,  and  will  be  surrounded  by  institutions  that  will 
take  advantage  of  their  advanced  cerebral  condition,  and  will 
carry  forward  their  development,  supervising  and  inter2:)ene- 
trating  it  by  their  influence. 

There  is  to  come  in  fuller  measure  the  dowoi-shining  in- 
spiration of  God's  Spirit,  giving  sensibility  and  power  to  all 
it  touches ;  and  the  whole  world  is  not  only  to  come  into 
that  state  in  which  men  are  born  in  favorable  conditions  indi- 
vidually, but  it  is  to  come  into  that  state  in  which  they  shall 
be  confederated  into  families,  with  sweeter  afiections,  with 
truer  conceptions  of  life,  and  with  better  ways  of  develoj^iug 
and  manifesting  them.  And  this  afiection  of  the  household 
is  to  be  enlarged  till  family  touches  family,  and  neighbor- 
hoods are  formed.  And  these  neighborhoods  are  to  oj^en 
and  bloom  into  each  other,  and  are  to  be  but  parts  of  com- 
munities. And  these  communities  are  to  express  a  finer 
taste,  a  sweeter  philanthrojiy,  a  better,  higher,  and  more  no- 
ble justice.  All  the  processes  of  society  are  to  exhibit  more 
of  Christ ;  so  that  at  last  the  day  shall  come  when  in  all  the 
earth,  like  a  man  without  a  pain  from  head  to  foot,  mankind 
shall  be  without  a  sadness,  or  a  sigh,  or  a  sorrow ;  when  the 
whole  globe,  in  all  its  parts,  shall  be  filled  full  of  Him  who 
filleth  all  things,  who  is  the  head  and  animating  brain  of 
time  and  the  world ;  and  the  globe,  no  longer  singing  a  re- 
quiem, no  longer  singing  of  things  gloomy  and  sad,  clothed 
with  light  and  inspired  with  joy,  shall  go  chanting  in  its 
roiinds,  and  the  heaven  and  the  earth  shall  sing  together; 
and  so  the  consolation  shall  come. 


The  Second  Incarnation.  401 

L  If  this  be  so,  then,  first,  dismiss  the  unworthy  conceptions 
of  Christ's  saving  which  have  sprung  from  a  jvidgment  form- 
ed upon  the  inchoate  and  undeveloped  state  of  things  that 
has  existed  hitherto.  Many  men  seem  to  think  that  the 
Gospel  is  sent  into  this  world  as  a  life-boat,  to  pick  off  from 
the  foundering  wreck  as  many  of  the  great  jDopulation  as 
they  possibly  can,  and  let  the  rest  go  down.  Thousands 
of  churches  and  societies  i^roceed  upon  the  philosophy  that 
there  is  no  use  of  attempting  to  save  the  race. 

But  Christianity  is  not  a  mere  wrecker's  boat.  In  saving 
men,  we  ought  to  do  it  with  the  feelmg  that  we  are  aiming 
toward  the  final  consummation — the  salvation  of  mankind. 
I  do  not  believe  the  world  is  to  be  burned  up  and  so  purified ; 
I  do  not  believe  the  earth  is  to  undei'go  a  sudden  transforma- 
tion ;  that  there  is  to  be  an  immediate  change  in  the  globe  or 
in  human  society.  I  believe  the  world  will  come  to  its  final 
state  as  my  tulips  will  come  to  blossom  next  spring.  They 
are  m  the  winter  now,  but  they  are  in  the  bulb,  and  will 
come  forth.  And  the  world  is  coming  to  blossom  yet.  Not 
in  my  day,  and  not  in  your  day,  but  ere  long,  in  ages  to 
come.  As  it  takes  a  great  many  years  to  bring  an  orchard 
into  full  fruitfulness,  but  as  at  last  the  trees  come  to  maturi- 
ty and  begin  to  bear  fruit,  so  by-and-by  men  will  begin  to  be 
fruitful  unto  God,  and  the  whole  globe  will  be  a  great  tree 
of  the  Lord,  filled  with  divine  fruit  on  every  side  and  on  ev- 
ery branch. 

n.  This  whole  globe  is  my  Lord's;  and  when  I  speak 
about  any  thing  that  concerns  his  kingdom,  whether  it  be 
science,  or  art,  or  learning,  or  politics,  or  any  thing  else,  I 
am  talking  about  my  Father's  business.  "  The  earth  is  the 
Lord's,  and  the  fullness  thereof"  I  am  his  son;  he  has  sent 
me  to  speak  about  the  things  pertaining  to  his  kingdom ;  and 
where  is  the  man  that  dare  look  me  in  the  face  and  tell  me 
that  I  am  a  meddler  with  things  that  do  not  concern  me  or 
my  Lord,  when  I  am  speaking  of  the  spirit  of  love  in  laws  and 
governments  ?    "  Get  thee  behind  me,  Satan."     Not  meddle 

XL— C  c 


•i02  The  Second  Incaenation. 

witli  politics  ?  He  that  does  not  know  how  wisely  to  meddle 
with  public  affairs  in  preaching  the  Gosjiel,  does  not  know 
how  to  preach  the  Gospel.  What  would  you  think  of  one 
of  the  ajDostles,  in  the  time  of  Christ,  who  had  been  commis- 
sioned to  give  sight  to  the  blind  and  hearing  to  the  deaf,  if 
he  had  gone  about  reading  discourses  on  medicine,  and  never 
curing  any  body,  saying,  "My  business  is  to  teach  medi- 
cine ?"  What  is  the  vise  of  teaching  medicine  if  you  do  not 
cure  any  body?  And  what  is  the  use  of  preaching  a  theolo- 
gy that  does  not  disturb  any  body?  Is  the  Gospel  a  sing- 
song lullaby  to  put  people  asleep  in  carnal  indulgences  ?  Is 
the  Gospel  designed  to  give  peace  to  men  while  yet  they  ai'e 
in  their  sins  ?  Is  it  a  cat's-cradle,  that  is  merely  meant  to 
change  and  take  on  all  manner  of  shapes  for  our  passing  en- 
tertainment ?  If  a  man  talks  sweet  things,  and  smooths  men 
down,  rubbing  the  fur  the  right  way,  and  pats  them,  men  say 
that  is  "  jD reaching  the  Gospel."  But  when  a  man  preaches 
the  Gospel  so  that  men  taste  the  bitter  which  is  going  to 
cure  them ;  when  he  preaches  the  Gospel  so  that  he  that  has 
an  ulcer  is  being  healed ;  so  that  he  that  was  born  blind  is 
receiving  his  sight ;  so  that  the  proud  Pharisee  is  rebuked 
and  the  cunning  priest  is  put  to  shame,  wicked  men  do  not 
like  the  disturbance,  and  say, "  Why  do  not  you  preach  like 
the  meek  and  lowly  Jesus  ?"  The  meek  and  lowly  Jesus ! 
He  said, "  Woe  unto  you,  scribes  and  Pharisees !"  So  I  say, 
"  Woe  unto  you,  respectable  liquor-dealers !"  Not  meddle 
with  carnal  affairs  ?  That  was  precisely  the  opinion  of  the 
devils  that  possessed  men,  and  that  said, "  Art  thou  come  to 
torment  us  before  our  time  ?  What  have  we  to  do  with  thee, 
Jesus  of  Nazareth  ?" 

Nay,  if  there  is  going  on  through  the  ages  this  silent,  and 
grand,  and  solemn  incarnation  of  the  heart  and  spirit  of 
Christ  that  is  to  dominate  the  globe  as  the  brain  does  the 
body,  then  the  very  thing  for  which  the  ministry  is  ordained 
is  to  help  that  work  forward;  to  make  the  crooked  places 
straight,  and  the  rough  places  plain ;  to  bring  down  the  high 


The  Second  Incarnation.  403 

liills,  and  lift  up  the  low  valleys,  and  make  the  way  of  the 
Lord  plain  before  his  face,  and  make  straight  in  this  desert  a 
highway  for  our  God.  And  while  I  know  there  are  many 
different  ways  of  doing  this,  and  while  I  respect  those  men 
who  confine  themselves,  some  to  an  intellectual  way,  some  to 
a  conversational  and  social  way,  and  some  to  a  way  of  moral 
sentiment ;  while  I  recognize  their  liberty,  and  acknowledge 
that  they  have  the  power  by  these  minor  methods  to  accom- 
plish the  work  imperfectly  to  a  certain  extent,  let  them  not 
undertake  to  rebuke  those  that  feel  the  impulse  of  a  larger 
way,  and  seek  to  be  workers  together  with  God  in  the  Avhole 
glorious  process  of  redemjjtion  by  which  he  means  to  subdue 
the  world  and  all  principalities  to  himself.  If  a  man  is  called 
to  the  preaching  of  the  Gospel,  he  is  called  not  only  to  the 
liberty,  but  to  the  dignity,  and  honor,  and  supremacy  of  so 
preaching  it  that  every  thing  in  life  shall  be  seasoned  with 
it,  shall  feel  its  smart  as  well  as  its  quickening  power,  and 
shall  be  healed  by  it. 

m.  If  these  views  be  correct,  then  all  those  tendencies 
which  now  alarm  and  discourage  Christian  men,  as,  for  in- 
stance, the  insurrection  of  science  against  faith,  have  no  real 
cause  of  fear  in  them.  As  it  was  necessary  that  the  child 
after  he  was  born  should  have  swaddling-clothes  for  the 
body,  though  the  moment  before,  his  spirit,  ethereal,  wore  no 
robe,  bore  no  matter,  so  Christ,  the  moment  he  was  fixed  in 
the  flesh,  needed  the  ministration  of  robe  and  vestment.  He 
cried  as  the  child  cries.  He  entered  life  at  the  lowest  point 
of  human  existence,  and  moved  upAvard  through  all  the  vari- 
ous stages  of  human  groAvth,  being  tempted  in  all  points  like 
as  we  are,  yet  without  sin. 

Now,  as  I  have  already  said,  the  globe  itself,  that  is,  the 
realm  of  natural  material  laws,  is  to  receive  a  second  incarna- 
tion of  Christ.  Science  is  now  making  the  swaddling-clothes 
of  Christianity.  If  it  takes  from  the  world  many  ecclesiastical 
notions  which  men  Avould  not  otherwise  give  up,  very  good. 
The  world  will  be  the  better  for  it.     If  there  be  many  doc- 


4:04  The  Second  Incarnation. 

trinal  ideas  tliat  melt  down  in  the  presence  of  science,  very 
good.  The  world  will  he  the  wiser  for  it.  If  there  be  many 
sujjerstitions  which  are  supposed  to  he  religion,  hut  which 
are  not  religion,  and  they  are  taken  away,  very  good.  The 
world  will  be  the  better  for  it.  No  matter  if  for  the  mo- 
ment it  seems  as  if  our  God  is  taken  away,  so  long  as  it 
proves  to  be  only  an  idol  that  is  taken.  There  may  come  a 
time  when  the  scientific  men  of  the  day  will  pause  in  their 
faith  in  Christ  and  in  the  word  of  God ;  but  it  will  be  only  a 
pause ;  and  when  the  scientific  problems  are  wrought  out,  it 
will  be  found  that  the  great  marrow-truths  of  the  word  of 
God  have  no  better  demonstrations  than  the  demonsti-ations 
of  science  itself.  I  do  not  yet  see  the  demonstration ;  but 
there  are  many  questions  to  be  solved  yet.  We  are  growing 
and  developing.  And  I  have  faith  in  God  as  manifested  in 
nature,  just  as  much  as  I  have  faith  in  God  as  manifested  in 
revelation.  It  is  but  one  God,  and  the  revelation  is  one, 
made  ui  two  forms,  which  will  not  clash  with  each  other, 
tune  beino;  o-iven  for  them  to  unfold. 

Therefore  I  dismiss  all  fears  for  the  future,  and  look  for- 
ward with  hope.  If  the  things  of  to-day  seem  to  be  work- 
ing against  religion,  I  believe  another  generation  will  prove 
that  they  were  working  for  it. 

IV.  If  these  views  be  correct,  we  shall  not  see  the  true 
glory  of  redemption  here.  We  can  not  imagine  it.  We 
shall  not  be  in  a  condition  to  see  it  until  we  have  passed  from 
this  mortal  state.  We  are  told  that  a  man  in  the  midst  of  a 
battle  is  the  least  able  to  describe  the  battle.  The  smoke 
and  noise,  and  the  intensity  of  the  conflict,  prevent  him  from 
having  a  large  view  of  the  movements  of  the  whole  field. 
We  are  secluded.  Each  age  is,  as  it  were,  but  a  note  in  the 
whole  period  of  time.  It  can  not  be  that  we  rise  so  high,  or 
stand  at  a  period  so  late,  that  we  see  the  whole  disclosure. 
Then  only  shall  we  understand  the  nature  of  Christ,  then 
only  the  comprehensive  plan  of  his  mercy,  then  only  this 
second  and  greater  incarnation,  by  which  he  interjects  the 


The  Second  Incarnation.  405 

whole  globe  and  its  processes  with  his  Spirit,  when  we  reach 
the  other  world.  Then  and  there  only  shall  we  be  furnished 
Avith  that  vision  by  which  we  may  see  his  grace,  so  that  wor- 
thily we  may  worship  him,  rejoicing  that  he  is  lifted  above 
all  kings,  all  princes,  all  principalities  of  every  name. 

While,  then,  with  the  whole  Christian  world,  we  celebrate 
the  birth  of  Christ  and  the  incarnation  of  the  Son  of  God,  do 
not  spend  all  the  time  in  looking  back  to  the  first  incarnation, 
but,  with  some  instruction  of  faith,  with  joy  and  hope,  with 
gratulation  and  reverence,  look  forward  and  see  the  process 
by  which  the  race  is  rising  up,  more  and  more  touched  with 
the  divine  Spirit,  more  and  more  impleted  with  the  mind  and 
will  of  God  in  Christ  Jesus — look  forward  to  that  perfect 
day  when  Christ  shall  have  filled  all  with  himself;  when  all 
things  shall  be  put  under  his  feet ;  when  he  shall  be  head 
over  all  things  to  his  body,  the  Church,  which  is  the  assem- 
bled race  of  holy  men,  the  fullness  of  him  that  filleth  all  with 
all. 


XIX. 


§xui  SlIintinHng. 


Preached  in  Plymouth  Church,  Brooklym,  in  the  Fall  ^1867. 


Geace  Aboundhstg. 


"Now  unto  him  that  is  able  to  do  exceeding  abundantly  above  all  that  we 
ask  or  think,  according  to  the  power  that  worketh  in  us,  unto  him  be 
glory  in  the  Church  by  Christ  Jesus  throughout  all  ages,  world  without 
end.     Amen." — Eph.,  iii.,  20,  21. 

This  is  a  doxology.  A  doxology  is  an  inscription  of  praise. 
It  usually  deals  with  some  title  of  God.  The  more  common 
phrase  in  doxology  is  Father,  Son,  and  Holy  Ghost,  to  whom 
praises  are  sung.  But  you  observe  that  the  peculiarity  of  this 
doxology  is  that  it  has  no  title — that  is,  no  single  word,  such 
as  we  are  accustomed  to  associate  with  the  idea  of  God.  The 
whole  of  the  twentieth  verse,  with  the  exception  of  the  last 
clause,  is  a  title  of  God ;  and  as  it  is  a  complex  title,  it  be- 
comes, from  its  singularity,  more  striking.  "  Now  unto" — 
whom? — "him  that  is  able  to  do  exceeding  abundantly  above 
all  that  we  ask  or  think."  That  is  the  title.  That  is  a  name 
of  God,  to  whom  is  to  be  glory  in  the  Church  throughout  all 
ages. 

You  will  observe  that  this  title  indicates  not  simply  power, 
but  disposition.  It  points  us  not  so  much  to  God's  majesty 
and  dominion,  not  so  much  to  his  relations,  to  the  framework 
of  creation,  or  to  the  laws  by  which  it  is  regulated,  as  to  the 
disposition  of  God  in  the  administration  of  that  kingdom 
which  every  where  is  ascribed  to  him.  "  Now  unto  him  that 
is  able  to  do  exceeding  abundantly  above  all  that  we  ask  or 
think." 

Notice  further  that  it  is  an  inscription  to  God,  of  the  habit 
and  disposition  of  doing  abundantly  not  only,  but  exceeding 
abundantly,  and  not  only  exceeding  abundantly,  but  exceed- 


410  Grace  Abounding. 

ing  ahundantly  more  than  we  ask  or  think — more  than  it  is 
in  man  to  want,  or  to  know  that  he  wants;  more  than  he 
can  comjoass  Iby  that  ever-weaving  thought  that  lies  behind 
words. 

But  that  is  not  all.  It  might  be  well  said  that  the  great 
majority  of  men  are  themselves  but  feeble  thinkers;  and 
what  could  they  think  that  would  be  worthy  of  such  an  ad- 
ministration as  that  of  a  God  who  does  more  than  the  highest 
orders  of  men  can  think  ?  Of  course  I  do  more  than  any  babe 
asks,  and  that  may  be  a  very  little,  because  a  babe  can  ask 
nothing.  I  do  more  than  a  child  one  year  old  can  ask  or 
think ;  but  a  child  of  one  year  old  can  ask  very  little,  and 
think  still  less.  But  it  is  said,  "  Unto  him  that  is  able  to  do 
exceeding  abundantly  above  all  that  we  ask  or  think,  accord- 
ing to  the  power  that  loorketh  in  us.''''  When  men's  thoughts 
are  touched ;  when  men's  natures  are  awakened  and  insj^ired ; 
when,  in  their  noblest  moments,  with  their  best  faculties  un- 
der the  divine  influence,  they  are  lifted  up  as  in  a  transfigura- 
tion, and  behold  all  things  in  their  plenitude  of  beauty,  and 
glory,  and  truth — then,  in  those  moments  when  God  is  work- 
ing powerfully  in  them,  and  teaching  them  to  think  by  teach- 
ing them  to  feel  (and  feeling  is  the  truest  mother  of  feeling) 
— even  then  it  is  said  that  God  does  exceeding  abundantly 
more  than  we  ask  or  think.  When  the  soul  is  on  its  wings ; 
when  it  follows  the  illumination  of  faith ;  when  it  enters  into 
the  secret  of  divine  existence ;  when  it  takes  the  noblest  con- 
cejjtion  of  its  own  destiny,  and  has  the  truest  sense  of  its  own 
wants ;  when  it  is  most  cleansed  from  the  selfishness  of  the 
earth — from  its  pride,  from  its  vanity — and  is  in  nearest  sym- 
pathy with  those  things  which  make  heaven,  then  will  it 
speak  till  language  shall  fail,  and  then  will  the  words  flow  on 
till  thoughts  fail,  then  will  feeling  flow  still  beyond  thought, 
and  still  beyond  that  God  does  for  us  not  merely  up  to  the 
measure  of  our  thinking  and  asking,  but  exceeding  abun- 
dantly beyond  that.  Language  can  give  no  farther  concep- 
tion of  the  amplitude  of  divine  generosity  than  is  conveyed 


Grace  Abounding.  411 

in  such  TTords  as  these,  when  in  their  contexts  they  are 
sought  out,  and  their  real  meaning  is  arrayed. 

It  is  necessary  that  we  should  emphasize  the  fact  that  this 
describes  the  divine  disposition ;  for  although  men  think,  per- 
haps, that  it  makes  but  little  difference,  if  God  only  does  what 
we  ask,  whether  he  does  it  from  a  direct,  voluntary  purpose, 
or  whether  it  is  the  tendency  of  the  divine  mind  j)revious  to 
our  petition,  yet  it  does  make  a  great  deal  of  difference.  We 
are  accustomed  to  feel  of  men  that  they  are  better  and  no- 
bler in  whom  resides  the  tendency  of  benevolence.  Before 
we  go  to  men,  we  assort  them.  We  say  of  one, "  Can  we  bring 
him  to  our  purpose  ?  Let  me  think.  Where  is  he  assailable  ? 
Where  is  his  interest  ?  Where  is  the  weak  point  in  his  dis- 
position ?  How  may  I,  by  this  or  that  influence,  win  him  to 
the  consideration  of  my  purpose,  and  so  gain  his  assent  ?" 
Now  it  is  worth  while  to  gain  a  man's  assent  to  a  ^ood  work 
by  any  right  means ;  but  if  you  can  make  a  man  see  the  roy- 
alty of  things  that  are  right  and  good,  and  predispose  him  to 
them,  is  there  no  difference  between  that  and  getting  his  as- 
sent by  some  forceful  method  ? 

It  makes,  perhaps,  but  little  difierence  to  me  whether  a 
river  is  supplying  Brooklyn  with  water,  or  whether  it  is  sup- 
plied by  a  reservoir ;  but  it  does  make  a  difierence  in  respect 
to  abundance  and  continuity.  There  is  that  old  iron  slave, 
the  steam-engine — the  only  slave  that  you  have  a  right  to 
keep  in  bondage — and  night  and  day  it  stands  lifting,  and 
lifting,  and  lifting  the  vast  supplies  of  water,  and  pouring 
them  over  into  the  Ridgewood  reservoir.  I  know  that  there 
will  be  enough ;  but  when  you  are  talking  about  endlessness, 
cojjiousness,  what  •§  this  compared  with  that  which  I  see  ev- 
ery day  under  my  chamber  window,  where  the  whole  ocean 
sweeps  in  and  out,  and,  night  and  daj^,  without  pump,  or 
steam,  or  any  like  mechanical  force,  is  always  there,  as  it  was 
before  there  was  a  man  on  these  shores,  and  as  it  will  be 
after  the  last  man  shall  haA'e  died  in  future  ages  ?  The  copi- 
ousness, the  abundance  of  the  ever-flowing  ocean  may  fitly 


412  Grace  Abounding. 

represent  the  abundance  of  the  divine  thought,  and  mercy, 
and  goodness ;  whereas  most  men  think  of  God  as  one  from 
whom  favors  are  obtained,  if  at  all,  by  what  may  almost  be 
called  the  pleading  of  prayer;  by  the  bringing  to  bear  upon 
him  influences  which  at  last  persuade  him  to  grant  the  things 
asked  for,  so  that  when  the  persuasion  stojos  the  supply  stops. 
Many  seem  to  think  that  prayer  is  but  an  engine  that  lifts — 
abundantly  lifts,  it  may  be — blessings  upon  the  heads  of  those 
that  employ  it ;  but  that  if  the  engine  stops  for  a  moment, 
the  reservoir  will  run  dry.  No  !  it  is  the  eternal  disj^osition 
of  God  to  be  full  of  love,  and  mercy,  and  kindness,  and  he  in- 
spires in  you  those  impulses  which  lead  you  to  go  and  ask 
him  for  those  things  which  you  need.  It  is  in  his  nature  to 
supply  our  wants.  This  disposition  it  is  that  makes  him  the 
God  he  is.    "Without  it,  there  Avould  not  be  any  God  such  as  he. 

Contract  this  superabundance  and  lavishness  of  divine 
thought,  and  feeling,  and  conduct  with  the  selfishness  which 
charactei'izes  the  monarchic  idea — the  idea  of  God  which  the 
heathen  used  to  entertain.  They  formed  the  best  image  that 
they  could,  doubtless ;  but,  after  all,  the  gods  of  the  heathen 
were  gods  of  selfishness — gods  of  passion.  Mythology  in- 
spired a  literature  in  which  the  heathen  idea  of  God  is  as- 
sociated with  many  philosophical,  many  ethical,  and  many 
moral  thoughts,  and  it  has  undoubtedly  leavened  the  mind 
of  the  whole  world  more  than  we  are  aware,  so  that  some 
yet  have  a  conception  of  Jehovah  as  a  being  who  is  of  right 
selfish,  because  he  is  in  might  superior  to  all  others.  Many 
people  to  this  day  think  that  God  may,  without  blame,  do  for 
his  own  glory  what  he  chooses  to  do,  and  that,  because  we 
are  weak,  we  have  no  right  to  plead,  liir  even  to  reason. 
And  there  seems  at  first  to  be  some  countenance  for  this  idea 
in  one  of  the  arguments  of  Paul.  But  it  is  only  seemingly 
so ;  for  this  idea  of  selfishness  is  foreign  to  the  whole  spirit 
of  the  New  Testament,  which  represents  God  as  the  centre 
of  infinite  and  inexhaustible  benevolence. 

Compare  this  great  aflluence  and  abundance  of  God's  dis- 


Grace  Abounding.  413 

position  with  the  stern  conception  that  many  have  of  a  judi- 
cial God,  measuring  and  apportioning  his  gifts  by  the  desert 
or  the  effort  of  the  receiver — a  view  that  is  derived  largely 
from  the  realm  of  natural  law,  where  it  is  supposed  that  the 
effects  measure  precisely  the  causes  which  are  employed.  It 
can  not  be  doubted  that  there  are  many  who  believe  that 
God  is  infinitely  great  and  good  to  those  who  are  able  to  ap- 
proach him,  but  who  have  a  consciousness  of  their  own  ill  de^ 
sert,  which,  together  with  their  idea  that  God  governs  accord- 
ing to  law,  amounts  to  a  feeling  that  the  divine  administration 
is  so  narrow  and  so  strictly  based  on  justice  that  God  can  not 
do  much  that  is  in  accordance  with  the  disposition  which  is 
set  forth  in  our  text.  Compare  this  giving  exceeding  abun- 
dantly, above  all  that  man  can  ask  or  think  even  in  the  mo- 
ments when  he  is  insph-ed  with  the  Spirit  of  God,  with  that 
exact  and  frugal  divinity  which  our  fears,  and  doubts,  and 
guilt  jjlace  before  the  mind.  We  condition  God.  When  we 
most  need  him,  we  are  least  able  to  go  to  him,  often  because 
we  have  the  feeling  that,  though  he  has  stores  of  bounty,  he 
gives  them  according  to  special  likings,  or  withholds  them 
from  prejudices  such  as  we  find  among  men.  I  might  here 
employ  the  language  which  the  apostle  employed  when  speak- 
ing to  his  disciples :  "  Ye  are  not  straitened  in  us,  but  ye  are 
straitened  in  your  ovni  bowels."  We  attribute  to  God  the 
littleness  of  our  disposition.  We  malign  the  grandeur,  and 
glory,  and  affluence  of  his  disposition. 

Now  this  quality  of  the  divine  disposition  is  shadowed 
forth  in  God's  natural  government.  The  abundance  of  things 
throughout  creation  is  one  of  the  shadowings  of  the  divine 
mind.  If  you  go  into  a  man's  house,  though  you  may  not  see 
him,  you  know  something  of  him,  and  you  know  something 
of  the  woman  who  is  the  housekeeper.  If  you  go  into  a  paint- 
er's studio,  and  see  what  subjects  he  is  moved  to  deal  with, 
you  see  somethmg  of  the  man  himself.  If  you  go  to  a  stu- 
dent's table,  and  see  what  topics  he  likes  to  think  upon,  you 
learn  something  of  his  nature.    If  you  go  into  a  dwelling,  and 


414-  Grace  Abounding. 

behold  order,  and  neatness,  and  taste  in  arrangement,  yon  see 
the  disposition  of  the  tenants  indicated  by  these  material 
things.  If  you  see  uncleanliness,  untidiness,  and  disorder, 
you  do  not  simply  see  filth  and  a  want  of  order — you  see  a 
mind  that  was  not  pained  by  disorder  and  uncleanliness.  If 
you  see,  on  the  other  hand,  beauty  and  attractiveness,  you  do 
not  see  these  alone,  but  through  them  you  perceive  the  mind 
that  arranged  them. 

Years  ago,  when  I  traveled  in  the  West,  there  were  hotels 
there  which  they  called  houses  of  entertainment.  There  was 
a  choice  between  these  hotels  and  the  barn,  but  it  usually  lay 
with  the  bam.  I  used  to  ride  frequently  several  hours  rather 
than  to  take  the  first  that  I  met.  I  watched  for  houses  wdth 
flowers  in  the  window.  For  when  I  found  a  flower,  I  found  a 
woman  that  loved  flowers  ;  and  when  I  found  a  woman  that 
loved  flowers,  I  found  a  woman  that  had  a  natural  element  of 
refinement  about  her.  There  was  something  beautiful  in  her. 
The  flower  was  not  merely  a  flower  to  me — it  was  the  sign  of 
a  person  that  had  a  certain  kind  of  disposition. 

When  I  look  into  nature,  I  see — what  ?  Not  sticks,  stones, 
flowers,  trees — I  see  him  that  made  them.  I  see  things  that 
were  created  by  Jesus  Christ.  When  I  look  upon  the  heavens 
of  the  natural  world,  I  behold  him  who  made  the  natural 
world.  If  I  see  frugality,  narrowness  of  compass,  want  of 
variety,  I  am  not  mistaken  as  to  the  disposition  of  the  crea- 
tor ;  but  if,  on  the  other  hand,  I  find  abundance,  superabund- 
ance, endless  change  and  endless  variety,  I  can  not  be  mis- 
taken as  to  their  meaning. 

In  the  revelations  of  nature,  then,  we  see  God's  disposition. 
We  see  his  housekeeping.  These  are  his  gardens ;  these  are 
his  fields ;  this  is  his  coloring  —  his  frescoing ;  these  are 
his  seasons ;  and  I  can,  from  these  elements  in  nature,  infer 
his  disposition,  as  much  as  I  can  infer  a  man's  disposition 
from  those  things  which  go  to  make  up  his  housekeeping. 
What  is  their  language  ?  Do  they  not  corroborate  the  dec- 
laration of  our  text?  Is  he  not  a  God  that  does  exceedmg 
abundantly  beyond  what  we  ask  or  think  ? 


Grace  Abounding.  415 

Variety  is  anotlier  term  for  abundance.  From  the  infinite 
variety  that  abounds  throughout  nature,  one  would  think 
that  God  never  wanted  to  have  two  things  to  be  alike.  .One 
would  think  that  the  problem  of  creation  was  to  see  how 
near  things  could  be  alike,  and  yet  be  separated  by  difier- 
ences  in  species  and  individuals.  An  endless  diversity,  that 
tends  to  endless  unity,  is  the  characteristic  of  creation. 

Abundance  by  continuity  and  succession  is  another  of  these 
hints ;  for  every  thing  which  takes  place  in  nature  occurs 
in  such  a  way  as  constantly  to  link  it  with  something  that  is 
to  come.  There  is  a  tendency  in  nature  to  reproduce  and 
continue,  so  that  there  shall  not  only  be  great  variety  and 
great  abundance  at  any  one  time,  but  greater  variety  and 
greater  abundance  in  time  to  come. 

Abundance  by  increase  affords  an  illustration  of  the  divme 
nature.  Men  say, "  We  get  just  according  to  what  we  do." 
They  suppose  that  the  efiect  which  we  gain  from  natural 
laws  is  measured  by  the  cause  which  we  employ.  It  is  not 
true.  I  plant  a  single  kernel  of  Indian  corn,  and  I  gain  from 
that  kernel  a  stalk  with  two  or  three  ears,  and  not  less  than 
a  hundred  kernels  on  each  ear.  I  plant  one  kernel,  and  get 
three  hundred.  Is  there  any  proportion  between  what  I  do 
and  what  I  get  ?  The  seedsman  goes  forth,  sowing  not  one 
seed,  but  many  seeds.  He,  taking  them,  and  scarcely  know- 
ing their  nature,  gives  them  to  the  furrow,  and  they  germi- 
nate, and  the  earth  nurses  them  in  its  bosom,  and  persuades 
them  to  come  forth,  and  the  wind  searches  for  them,  and  the 
dews  and  rains  hunt  them,  and  all  warming  and  stimulating 
influences  begin  to  play  upon  them,  and  they  give  back  not 
according  to  what  the  sower  gave  to  the  earth,  not  according 
to  the  power  which  he  has  exerted  upon  them,  but  according 
to  that  nature  which  God  has  infused  into  the  material  crea- 
tion ;  and  therefore  they  give  abundantly  beyond  what  the 
sower  did,  and  beyond  what  he  had  reason  to  expect  before 
he  had  experience  of  God's  bounty. 

On  my  summer  nook  stands  a  venerable  apple-tree,  proba- 


416  Grace  Abounding. 

bly  a  hundred  and  fifty  years  old.  It  has  now  lost  much  of 
its  hair.  It  is  dead  and  bald  at  the  top.  I  let  it  stand  be- 
cause it  is  a  sentinel  of  ages.  It  has  buried  generation  upon 
generation.  It  heard  the  old  Revolutionary  cannon;  balls 
fell  not  far  from  its  foot.  For  probably  a  hundred  years  it 
has  borne  its  annual  crop  of  apples,  and  a  great  abundance 
of  them.  There  was  a  time  when  a  boy,  eating  an  apple, 
took  from  his  mouth  a  seed,  and. snapped  it,  and  it  fell  into 
the  grass,  and  the  rain  worked  it  into  the  soil,  and  the  soil 
coaxed  it  to  grow.  That  little  seed  of  an  apple,  not  so  large 
as  your  finger-nail,  struck  down  its  root,  and  lifted  up  its 
trunk,  which  has  stood  the  greater  part  of  two  centuries,  and 
produced  a  thousand  bushels  of  fruit  and  myriads  of  seeds. 

Now,  is  God's  nature  indicated  by  this  ?  Yes,  because  the 
way  God  makes  the  natural  world  act  indicates  how  he 
thinks.  It  indicates  what  his  thoughts  and  tendencies  are, 
and  these  mark  his  disposition.  The  prodigality  of  nature ; 
the  immensity  of  those  agents  which  are  at  work  in  the  nat- 
ural world ;  the  vast  circuits  and  quantities  of  heat  and  light, 
which  are  as  much  material  streams  as  rivers  are,  which  have 
poured  from  the  bosom  of  the  sun  since  the  world  began 
without  any  appreciable  diminution,  and  which  have  filled 
space  far  beyond  the  most  expert  calculator's  measuring — 
what  do  these  peculiarities  indicate  but  that  j)roblem  deep- 
est, most  mysterious,  and  most  august  and  jirecious  —  the 
height,  and  depth,  and  length,  and  breadth,  the  infinitcness 
of  the  love  of  God  in  Christ  Jesus  ?  Who  shall  measure  or 
know  what  is  the  kindness  of  the  divine  heart  ? 

There  are  some  things  about  which  we  may  be  in  danger 
of  exaggeration  and  excess ;  but  if  we  attempt,  by  analogies 
and  illustrations,  to  appreciate  the  scope  and  quantity  of  that 
which  is  in  itself  infinite,  it  is  not  possible  to  exaggerate. 
When  the  question  is  as  to  the  absolute  nature  of  infinity,  it 
is  not  possible  that  there  shall  be  an  approximation  to  the 
truth,  still  less  exaggeration. 

A  child  goes  with  a  cup  to  the  side  of  the  ocean,  and  ladles 


Grace  Abouxding.  417 

out  the  water  cuj^ful  by  cupful,  and  puts  it  in  his  mimic  lake ; 
and  the  thought  of  the  child  is  that  he  vn\l  measure  the  water 
in  the  ocean,  and  see  how  much  there  is.  How  much  chance 
is  there  that  he  will  accomplish  what  he  undertakes?  He 
may  dip  out  water  from  the  ocean  till  he  has  grown  to  his 
manhood,  and  there  will  be  no  less  there  than  when  he  be- 
gan, and  the  task  which  he  has  undertaken  will  be  no  nearer 
its  completion.  We  stand  by  the  side  of  an  infinite  God,  and 
attempt  to  measure  infinity  by  methods  that  are  more  inade- 
quate than  that  of  the  child  who  attempts  to  measure  the 
quantity  of  water  in  the  ocean  with  a  cup. 

All  these  views  have  been  more  or  less  corroborated  by 
Christian  experience.  This  infinite  abundance,  transcending 
our  expectations,  our  requests,  yea,  even,  if  it  might  be  so 
said,  our  ideals  of  our  own  wants — this  we  have  made  proof 
of  ourselves ;  and  among  the  richest  and  ripest  benefits  that 
come  from  Christian  communion,  from  the  interchange  of 
Christian  experience,  is  this  corroboration  which  we  gain  one 
with  another  of  the  true  nature  of  divine  beneficence  and 
divine  goodness. 

I  will  not  dwell  upon  God's  providential  bounties,  whose 
flow  is  incalculable ;  yet  there  are  hours,  I  think,  to  every  re- 
flective mind,  when  there  rises  up  such  a  sense  of  the  great- 
ness of  the  way  in  which  God  has  led  him  through  life  that 
he  is  overwhelmed,  and  it  seems  as  though  there  was  concen- 
trated upon  him  a  greater  amount  of  thought  and  feeling 
than  it  is  possible  for  the  imagination  to  conceive.  Would 
that  we  had  a  more  frequent  sense  of  God's  bounty !  I  do 
not  mean  a  sense  of  divine  providential  mercies  merely,  but 
a  retrospect  of  man's  individual  life ;  of  the  way  God  has 
dealt  with  him ;  of  the  way  in  which  the  divine  Spirit  has  en- 
tered into  the  business  of  his  life ;  of  the  sparing  mercies  of 
God  J  of  the  dangers  unseen  and  suddenly  disclosed  fi-om 
which  he  has  been  rescued;  of  sicknesses  of  which  he  has  been 
healed ;  of  losses  which  have  not  been  his  destruction ;  of 
temptations  which  threatened  to  overcome  him,  but  whicl), 

H— Dd 


418  Grace  Abounding. 

after  all,  were  vanquished.  These  things,  and  ten  thousand 
others  that  every  reflective  man  must  remember,  and  more 
that  he  can  not  recall,  can  not  fail,  it  seems  to  me,  to  give 
any  just  man  a  sense  of  God's  exceeding  abundant  goodness 
beyond  asking  and  beyond  thought. 

If  any  one  has  reared  children,  and  inducted  them  safely 
into  manhood  in  the  midst  of  the  dangers  that  multiplied 
about  them,  and  the  troubles  that  beset  them,  and  the  temp- 
tations that  surrounded  them,  and  the  liabilities  to  evil  that 
contested  their  way,  he  must  be  strangely  insensible,  in  look- 
ing back  upon  his  household,  if  he  be  not  overwhelmed  with 
a  sense  of  the  multitudinousness  of  God's  mercies.  I  think 
that  there  is  nothing  in  this  world  that  one,  in  founding  a 
family,  should  be  more  thankful  for  than  the  successful  estab- 
lishment of  children  in  it,  from  youth  to  rij^e  and  virtuous 
manhood.  A  man  may  do  many  things  in  this  world  that 
are  deserving  of  praise,  but  there  are  few  things  that  he  can 
do  that  are  more  deserving  of  praise  than,  dying,  to  leave 
his  name  with  a  family  of  children  who  shall  more  than  fill 
his  place,  and  who  shall  maintain  virtue,  and  intelligence, 
and  good  habits  throughout  their  lives. 

For  what  a  perilous  navigation  it  is  !  How  many  corrupt 
influences  are  at  work  on  the  soul !  How  many  evils  there 
are  in  society  that  tend  to  pull  men  down  and  destroy  them  ! 
How  many  perish  by  the  way!  Where  the  household  has 
successfully  accomplished  its  voyage,  there  are  few  things 
for  which  there  ought  to  be  more  profound  gratitude  or  a 
deeper  sense  of  God's  exceeding  abundant  goodness. 

How  much  have  you  accomj^lished,  with  how  little  eflbrt, 
for  the  general  work  of  Christ  in  this  world  ?  Consider  how 
slender  your  faith  has  been.  If  there  are  any  within  the 
sound  of  my  voice  who  have  loved  the  kingdom  of  Christ, 
and  desired  to  be  laborers  in  it,  think  how  little  you  have 
done,  and  how  much  has  been  done  through  you.  Compare 
the  exertion  that  you  have  put  forth  with  what  has  been 
wrought  through  your  instrumentality.     Consider  your  ir- 


Grace  Aboundixg.  419 

resoluteness,  and  faithlessness,  and  want  of  continuity.  See 
how  much  God  has  given  you  for  so  small  an  outlay  on  your 
part.  I  do  not  think  that  any  body  who  compares  the  little 
that  he  has  done  with  the  fruit  that  has  followed  his  work- 
ing can  fail  to  realize  God's  abundant  goodness  to  him. 

Remember  the  way  of  prayer.  How  often  have  we  gone 
to  the  throne  of  grace  asking  and  seeming  not  to  receive ! 
When  we  look,  in  the  time  of  struggle,  at  our  prayers,  often 
our  faith  is  invalidated ;  but  when  we  look  upon  the  whole 
of  our  life  and  judge  of  prayer,  not  specially,  but  generically 
— when  we  wait,  giving  it  time  for  fulfillment,  and  working 
with  our  prayers,  I  think  that  every  true  Christian  man  is 
convinced,  sooner  or  later,  that  God  has  given  him  a  harvest 
in  answer  to  his  prayers  which  he  had  no  reason  to  expect. 
No  man  can  look  upon  what  he  brings  to  the  work,  and  what 
the  work  becomes  in  his  hand,  without  being  humbled  in 
view  of  his  own  weakness,  nor  I  trust,  also,  without  being 
filled  with  admiration  and  reverence  for  that  loving  Heart 
that  does  exceeding  abundantly  more  than  we  ask  or  think. 

If  these  views  and  experiences  are  correct,  there  is  every 
encouragement  for  men  to  ask  in  prayer  for  what  they  need. 
Among  men,  the  imputation  of  discreditable  qualities  is  one 
of  the  hardest  things  to  be  borne.  If  you  are  honest,  you 
can  not  bear  even  the  suspicion  that  you  may  be  dishonest. 
It  galls  you  to  have  it  taken  for  granted  that  you  can  not 
stand  temptation.  "  Of  course  you  are  honest ;  but  still  we 
might  as  well  have  this  little  matter  put  in  black  and  white, 
because  it  is  business."  Such  an  implication  that  you  are 
dishonest  is  more  offensive  than  if  a  man  should  say  "  you 
are  a  thief"  If  you  are  true,  and  a  man  treats  you  as  though 
you  were  not — if  you  are  to  be  relied  upon  and  trusted,  and 
men  treat  you  as  though  you  were  not,  there  can  be  no  great- 
er cause  of  offense  to  your  experience, 

Now  how  have  you  been  dealing  with  this  God  who  has 
dealt  with  you  on  this  pattern  of  doing  exceeding  abundant-. 
ly  more  than  you  asked  or  thought  ?    You  have  treated  him 


■i20  Grace  Abounding. 

on  the  assumption  that  be  was  penurious,  and  willing  to  give 
only  on  terms  that  were  strict  and  severe.  And  how  do  you 
suppose  our  treatment  of  the  loving  God  must  smite  on  his 
bosom  ?  The  constant  assumption  that  God  is  not  good  is 
one  of  the  crimes  and  sins  of  human  life. 

Many  men  seem  to  shrink  from  prayer  as  though  it  were  a 
matter  of  doubt  whether  they  could  pray.  They  would  pray, 
but  they  do  not  feel  that  they  are  worthy  to.  Who  ever 
was  ?  There  never  was  a  worthy  prayer.  Never  did  a  man 
receive  a  gift  of  God  that  was  deserved.  Never  was  there  a 
divine  gift  that  was  not  a  mercy.  A  mercy  is  a  gift  to  one 
who  does  not  deserve  it ;  and  yet  men  are  held  aloof  from 
prayer  by  the  false  notion  that  God's  mercies  are  hindered 
by  their  unworthiness,  as  though  he  had  not  declared  him- 
self to  be  one  that  gives  beyond  their  asking  and  beyond 
their  thought.  He  will  not  measure  you,  and  give  you  less 
than  you  expected.  He  does  not  determine  from  your  char- 
acter and  desert  what  he  shall  give.  He  expressly  declares 
that,  and  he  tells  us  to  act  in  the  same  manner.  "  He  maketh 
.his  sun  to  rise  on  the  evil  and  on  the  good,  and  sendeth  rain 
on  the  just  and  on  the  unjust."  These  testify  to  his  love. 
Alas  !  that  he  should  need  such  witnesses  as  these !  "When 
men  no  longer  witness  for  him,  the  clouds  and  the  daily  re- 
curring sun  are  his  witnesses. 

God,  then,  docs  not  limit  himself  by  the  desert  of  those  to 
whom  he  gives  mercies,  but  takes  his  patterns  from  the  large- 
ness and  generosity  of  his  own  nature.  He  pleases  himself 
by  giving. 

"VYhy,  when  this  great  organ  sounds,  it  does  not  sound  ac- 
cording to  the  size  of  your  ear,  but  according  to  the  size  of 
its  own  pipes.  Its  harmony  does  not  dejDcnd  upon  your  abil- 
ity to  appreciate  it,  but  upon  the  vastness  and  complexity  of 
its  own  stojjs.  So  our  God  sits  in  heaven  with  infinite  re- 
sources and  power,  and  does,  not  according  to  our  thought, 
but  exceeding  abundantly  more  than  we  can  ask  or  think. 

There  is  every  encouragement,  also,  for  men  to  labor  in  the 


Grace  Abounding.  421 

cause  of  Christ  among  their  fellow-meu.  I  know  that  ,men 
are  deterred  from  laboring  in  that  cause  by  a  sense  of  their 
inefficiency,  and  of  the  magnitude  of  the  resistance  which 
they  will  find  in  human  nature-^-in  the  jDassions  that  are  ever 
at  w^ork  in  man's  life.  It  is  true  that  there  are  resistances ; 
it  is  true  that  there  are  enemies  and  animosities ;  it  is  true 
that  we  work  fitfully,  and  unwisely,  and  circuitously  often, 
instead  of  directly ;  but  that  which  gives  us  confidence  in  our 
labor  is  the  assurance  that  it  shall  not  be  in  vain  in  the  Lord. 
We  are  working  under  the  influence  of  great  divine  decrees. 
The  greatness  of  God's  gifts  are  not  to  be  measured  by  our 
wisdom;  but  we  are  workers  together  wath  God,  and  our 
work  is  affected  by  the  influence  of  the  divine  disposition, 
and  its  results  are  according  to  the  measure  of  his  working. 

A  child  sits  in  a  little  skiff  on  the  Mississippi  River  when 
it  is  swollen  by  a  freshet,  and  plies  the  oar,  and  glides  swift- 
ly on  his  course;  and  as  he  looks  upon  the  banks  and  sees 
them  fly  rapidly  past  him,  he  fondly  thinks  that  it  is  he  that 
is  making  such  headway.  He  is  doing  something  toward  it ; 
but  if  he  wants  to  know  how  much,  let  him  turn  his  skifl* 
around  and  try  to  row  up  stream.  What  gives  him  his 
speed  ?  The  dip  of  his  oar  ?  a  little  of  it.  But  the  vast 
sweep  of  the  Mississippi  current  is  that  which  makes  the  dij^ 
of  his  oar  so  like  an  eagle's  wing  for  speed. 

We  are  borne  down  the  stream  of  time  by  an  irresistible 
divine  power ;  and  though  we  are  weak,  and  ignorant,  and 
unskilled,  and  though  our  efforts  are  intermittent,  we  are  un- 
der a  divine  constitution  by  which  abundantly  more  "udll 
come  from  our  labor  than  we  have  reason  to  think. 

Ah !  when  the  apples  are  ripe,  a  child's  foot  against  the 
tree  will  bring  scores  and  scores  of  them  to  the  ground.  He 
might  take  his  little  stick  and  throw  it  twenty  times,  and  not 
hit  more  than  a  single  apple ;  for  he  would  be  working  ac- 
cording to  his  own  skill,  and  would  accomplish  but  little ; 
but  when  he  strikes  the  trunk  of  the  tree,  dozens  of  apples 
have  been  waiting  for  that,  and  they  drop  at  his  feet,  and  he  , 


422  Grace  Abounding. 

gets  twenty  times  as  many  as  lie  would  do  by  plying  Ms  stick 
merely. 

Now  in  every  part  of  life  God  has  fruit  ready  to  di'op  into 
your  lap ;  and  the  abundance  that  you  get  is  not  to  be  meas- 
ured by  the  skill  with  which  you  can  throw,  but  by  that  di- 
vine nature  which  does  exceedmg  abundantly  more  than  we 
can  ask  or  think. 

Are  you  discouraged  because  the  work  seems  difficult,  be- 
cause the  nature  that  you  are  trying  to  train  seems  cross- 
grained  and  gnarled  ?  Are  you  discouraged  because  the  soil 
on  which  you  are  laboring  is  like  sand,  that  gives  back  noth- 
ing for  the  cultui-e  you  give  it  ?  Remember,  though  there 
are  these  special  discouragements  and  difficulties  by  the  way, 
that  the  great  encouragement  and  the  great  hope  is  God. 
"Now  unto  him  that  is  able  to  do  exceeding  abundantly 
above  all  that  we  ask  or  think"  "  be  glory  in  the  Church  by 
Christ  Jesus  throughout  all  ages,  world  without  end." 

I  feel  to-day  as  though  this  subject  might  be  brought  home 
to  us.  It  will  be  twenty  years  in  October  since  I  became  the 
pastor  of  this  church,  and  when  I  look  back,  I  can  not  but 
remember  those  days  of  early  meetings  and  of  struggle  for 
life  which  we  passed  through.  Brethren,  ye  who  wrought 
here  in  the  foundations  of  this  enterprise,  do  not  you  remem- 
ber how  you  did  not  dare  to  look  ovit  of  to-day  into  to-mor- 
row ?  The  clouds  were  so  thick  that  you  could  not  see 
through  them,  and  the  only  way  was  to  go  on  from  day  to 
day,  trusting  to  Providence  for  the  result.  How  small,  how 
almost  penurious  was  the  beginning !  How  feeble  were  the 
instruments  !  How  long  was  the  way !  And  yet  now  look 
back  through  twenty  years,  and  see  what  this  Church  has  been 
permitted  to  do.  Think  how  many  are  in  it,  and  how  many 
have  been  in  it,  living  in  the  faith  of  God  abundant  Christian 
lives.  Measure  your  own  growth  in  grace  and  increase  in 
knowledge.  I  see  whole  families  here  now  in  Christ  Jesus 
and  in  the  visible  Church,  not  one  of  whom  were  Christians 
when  I  came  here.     Consider  that  the  membership  of  this 


Geace  Abounding.  423 

Church  is  gathered  from  so  many  quarters,  with  such  diverse 
influences  and  natural  repugnances.  "Was  ever  a  Church  made 
up  of  so  many  denominations,  and  yet  with  such  entire  and 
mutual  confidence  ?  Has  not  the  Spirit  of  Christ  been  stron- 
ger in  your  midst  than  the  spirit  of  sect  ?  Was  there  ever  a 
Church  that  had  a  more  precious  record  in  heaven?  The 
names  that  we  remember,  the  names  that  we  hang  in  our  cal- 
endar, are  like  the  stars  indeed,  pure  and  ever-shining,  and 
brighter  as  the  night  draws  near.  God  has  given  us  these 
things. 

And  how  much  work  have  you  been  permitted  to  do  in  the 
nation — yea,  and  across  the  sea !  There  is  scarcely  a  Church 
of  Christ,  I  suppose,  in  Protestant  Christendom,  in  which  the 
name  of  Plymouth  Church  is  not  known.  And  God  hath 
wrought  it,  to  the  honor  and  praise  of  his  own  great  name, 
working  in  you  to  will  and  to  do  of  his  good  pleasure. 

Now,  with  this  long  record,  stored  so  wonderfully  with 
God's  abundant  goodness,  what  shall  be  the  future  ?  Will 
you  go  out  of  the  past,  which  was  like  a  Garden  of  Eden, 
into  a  future  that  shall  be  like  a  howling  wilderness  ?  Will 
not  the  God  of  the  past  be  your  God?  Now,  with  augment- 
ed opportunities,  should  we  be  less  useful,  and  not  more  ? 
Should  enterprise  falter?  Shoiild  we  drop  our  hands  in  the 
midst  of  the  battle,  or  should  we  again  renew  our  allegiance 
of  fidelity  and  faith  to  him  who  does  exceeding  abundantly 
more  than  we  can  ask  or  think,  and  go  forward  and  labor  to 
the  end  ? 

God  grant  that  you  may  drop  down  in  the  harness.  God 
give  you  the  privilege  of  working  to  the  last  moment.  And 
may  your  words  be  now  words  of  cheer  and  duty  in  the  field, 
and  by-and-by  words  of  victory  and  glory  ia  the  heavens. 


XX. 


CliB'iairl)  /nnl. 


Preached  in  Plymouth  Church,  Brooklyn,  Sabbath  evening, 
March  22d,  1868. 


The   Rich  Fool. 


"And  he  spake  a  parable  unto  them,  saying,  The  ground  of  a  certain  rich 
man  brought  forth  plentifully :  and  he  thought  within  himself,  saying, 
What  shall  I  do,  because  I  have  no  room  where  to  bestow  my  fruits  ? 
And  he  said.  This  will  I  do :  I  will  pull  down  my  barns,  and  build  great- 
er; and  there  will  I  bestow  all  my  fruits  and  my  goods.  And  I  will 
say  to  my  soul,  Soul,  thou  hast  much  goods  laid  up  for  many  years  ;  take 
thine  ease,  eat,  drink,  and  be  merry.  But  God  said  unto  him,  Thou 
fool,  this  night  thy  soul  shall  be  required  of  thee :  then  whose  shall  those 
things  be  which  thou  hast  provided  ?  So  is  he  that  layeth  up  treasure 
for  himself,  and  is  not  rich  toward  God." — Luke,  xii.,  16-21. 

There  is  great  diversity  in  the  parables  of  our  Savior. 
Some  of  them  are  scarcely  more  than  maxims.  Some  of  them 
are  sketches"f  pictures.  Some  of  them  are  more  elaborate, 
almost  as  much  so  as  a  history.  This,  although  brief,  is  one 
of  the  most  symmetrical,  full  of  instruction  in  every  mem- 
ber. Its  point  scarcely  can  be  mistaken.  There  are  no  pos- 
sessions more  legitimately  obtamed,  ordinarily,  than  those 
which  come  by  husbandry.  Here  was  a  rich  man  whose  j)OS- 
sessions  consisted  of  lauds,  and  the  product  of  lands.  Al- 
ready he  was  rich  ;  but,  as  is  wont  to  be  the  case,  riches  bred 
riches.  His  wealth  was  increasing.  There  was  peculiar  j)er- 
tinence  in  selecting  such  an  example.  Otherwheres,  and  in 
other  ways,  wrongly-obtained  riches  are  animadverted  upon; 
but  the  lesson  of  this  parable  depends  upon  the  fact  that  the 
man  was  pursuing  an  honorable  calling ;  that  he  was  obtain- 
ing from  an  honorable  calling  justifiable  wealth. 

"  The  ground  of  a  certain  rich  man  brought  forth  plenti- 
fully ;  and  he  thought  within  himself — " 

What  an  empire  is  this  thinking  icithin  one's  self!  The 
sphere  of  thought  is  the  sphere  of  true  liberty !    We  can  not 


428  The  Rich  Fool. 

walk  where  we  please,  but  we  can  think  as  we  please.  "We 
can  not  act  as  we  choose.  Customs  restrain  like  walls.  A 
man  is  obliged  to  limit  his  conduct,  but  every  man  possesses 
an  interior  liberty.  Outwardly  he  can  not  spread  his  wuigs 
like  a  bird  and  fly  to  the  uttermost  parts  of  the  earth,  but 
inwardly  he  can  fly  as  he  pleases.  There  is,  too,  a  vast  dif- 
ference between  what  a  man  does  and  says,  and  what  he 
thinks  within  himself.  Oh,  how  many  thefts  a  man  thinks 
within  himself!  How  many  base  jealousies !  How  many 
stui^id  ambitions  !  How  many  disallowable  j)leasures  a  man 
dallies  with  in  his  thoughts  !  What  excursions  of  the  imagin- 
ation ;  what  wondrous  creations  of  this  architect  of  thought ; 
what  a  realm,  wider  than  the  scope  of  the  heavens,  broader 
than  from  horizon  to  horizon ;  what  an  illimitable  realm  is 
that  which  a  man's  silent  thoughts  traverse,  and  traverse  so 
easily  that  there  is  no  sound  in  their  going,  and  so  suddenly 
that  there  is  no  time  occupied  in  their  passage !  The  vast 
circuit  of  this  immeasurable  globe  man  passes  oasily,  leaving 
no  footfall,  making  no  track,  always  finding  new  j^aths. 

"And  he  thought  within  himself,  saying.  What  shall  I  do, 
because  I  have  no  room  where  to  bestow  my  fruits  ?" 

Men's  thoughts  within  themselves  arg,apt  to  be  anxious 
and  uneasy.  First  they  think, "  What  shall  I  do  to  get  rich- 
es ?"  Then,  when  they  possess  them,  they  begin  anxiously 
to  think, "  What  shall  I  do  with  riches  ?"  Care  in  getting, 
care  in  investing,  care  in  increasing,  care  in  defending — riches 
and  cares  go  together !  And  so  a  man  that  makes  himself  a 
servant  of  wealth  is  a  slave  from  beginning  to  end. 

"What  shall  I  do,  because  I  have  no  room  where  to  be- 
stow my  fruits  ?" 

This  is  all,  it  seems,  that  God's  great  goodness  to  him  led 
him  to  think  of.  God  had  made  the  heavens  to  be  to  him  as 
a  bountiful  bosom  to  the  child.  God  made  the  seasons  to  be 
his  servants,  insjoired  the  earth  to  be  productive,  maintained 
his  reason,  and  all  his  active  and  executive  skill  For  all 
these  there  was  no  grateful  thought.    He  did  not  think  with- 


The  Eicn  Fool.  429 

in  himself, "  Blessed  be  the  name  of  God,  from  whose  hand 
comes  all  wealth."  He  did  not  think  within  himself,  "What 
shall  I  render  nnto  the  Lord  for  all  his  benefits  toward  me  ?" 
No,  still  groping  avariciously  and  selfishly,  he  says, "  What 
shall  I  do  with  all  my  possessions  ?" 

"  And  he  said.  This  Avill  I  do :  I  will  pixll  down  my  bams, 
and  build  greater ;  and  there  will  I  bestow  all  my  fruits  and 
my  goods." 

I  will  hoard — not  spend ;  not  lend ;  not  distribute ;  not  scat- 
ter abroad.     I  will  hoard — that  was  his  thought. 

Now  the  mere  increase  of  warehouses,  and  barns,  and  gran- 
aries to  meet  the  increasing  husbandry  is  not  in  itself  wrong. 
It  may  be  a  part  of  the  administration  of  consummate  pru- 
dence. The  thing  itself  is  not  a  thing  to  be  reprobated, 
yet  it  was  in  this  case  most  wicked.  The  sin  was  not  in 
the  mere  act,  but  m  the  spirit  that  directed  it ;  for  the  spirit 
of  the  man  was  one  of  entire  ingratitude  toward  God.  If 
there  had  been  no  God,  he  could  not  have  been  more  abso- 
lutely left  out  from  his  thought. 

There  was  the  want,  also,  of  any  proper  consideration  of 
the  ends  and  uses  of  abundance ;  for  though  a  man  has  a 
primary  right  to  so  much  of  that  which  he  earns  as  shall  sus- 
tain his  own  body  and  his  household,  he  is  also  a  debtor  to 
those  that  are  pooi*er  than  he.  Were  there  none  such  about 
him  ?  no  needy  relatives  ?  no  unfortunate  neighbors  ?  no 
helpless  mother  with  orphan  children  struggling  agamst  the 
face  of  a  hard  poverty  ?  no  strangers  ?  no  friendless  youths 
that  needed  a  helping  hand  ?  Here  sat  this  man  in  the  midst 
of  his  increasing  abundance,  growing  rich  and  richer,  and  his 
thought  was, "  What  shall  I  do  with  it  ?"  He  heard  no  sighs. 
He  saw  no  tears.  He  felt  no  humanity.  "  This  will  I  do," 
he  said ;  "  I  will  build  bigger  barns.  I  will  increase  my  store 
of  useless  wealth."  He  had  already  more  than  he  wanted  or 
could  use  for  himself.  He  had  to  pile  it  higher  and  still  store 
it  away.  And  it  is  as  useless  to  put  away  property  that  you 
can  not  use  as  it  is  to  have  gold  in  the  bowels  of  the  mount- 


430  The  Eich  Fool. 

aius  of  California.  Of  what  use  to  a  banker  or  broker  is  un- 
dug  gold?  And  of  what  use  to  a  man  is  property  if  he  does 
not  know  how  to  use  it  ? 

As  you  will  observe,  there  was  a  certain  royal  conceit  in 
the  whole  of  this  personage  of  the  parable. 

"  This  will  I  do :  I  will  pull  down  my  barns,  and  build 
greater;  and  there  will  I  bestow  all  my  fruits  and  my  goods." 

Does  it  not  recall  another  passage  ? 

"  The  king  spake  and  said,  Is  not  this  great  Babylon  that  I 
have  built  for  the  house  of  the  kingdom  by  the  might  of  my 
power,  and  for  the  honor  of  my  majesty  ?" 

Now  the  king  was  as  big  a  fool  as  if  he  had  been  this  fool 
of  the  parable.  Oh  the  arrogance,  the  towering  conceit, 
which  comes  with  success  in  life  !  How  men  are  puffed  up ! 
How  they  think,  because  prosperity  has  blown  to  them,  that 
they  are  more  than  other  men !  How  censorious  they  grow  ! 
How  they  love  to  praise  their  own  shrewdness  by  desjiising 
some  other  men's  blundering !  How  they  like  to  point  men 
to  their  own  frugality  by  pointing  to  other  men's  wasteful 
habits.  "Ah !"  they  say, "  every  thing  which  he  touches  fails ;" 
and  the  echo  of  that  is, "  Every  thing  that  I  touch  succeeds." 
Some  men  seem  to  be  critics  of  others,  whereas  they  are  flat- 
tering painters  of  their  own  portraits. 

But  this  is  not  the  worst. 

"  There  will  I  bestow  all  my  fruits  and  my  goods.  And  I 
will  say  to  my  soul,  Soul,  thou  hast  much  goods  laid  up  for 
many  years ;  take  thine  ease,  eat,  drink,  and  be  merry." 

In  the  first  place,  the  whole  ambition  of  this  man  was  con- 
centrated upon  himself.  He  had  not  a  thought  outside  of 
himself.  The  end  of  his  living,  the  end  of  the  property  which 
was  intrusted  to  him,  the  supreme  end  of  the  administration 
of  all  the  effects  in  his  hands,  was  this — my  own  personal 
good.  There  was  not  one  drop  sj)illed  over.  There  was  no 
thought  of  others. 

But  this  man  said,  looking  at  more  than  he  could  use,  and 
seeing  the  fresh-coming  harvest,  "All  is  for  me."   "  I"  was  his 


The  Kich  Fool.  431 

god.  He  was  a  supreme  egotist,  and  a  most  selfish  worship- 
er of  himself. 

But  then,  even  that  seems  to  me  less  remarkable  than  this 
extraordinary  address  to  his  soul. 

"  Soul,  thou  hast  much  goods  laid  up  for  many  years ;  take 
thine  ease,  eat,  drink,  and  be  merry." 

Do  you  suppose  that  a  man  can  feed  his  soul  in  that  way  ? 
Can  a  soul  be  fed  with  silver  or  gold  ?  Can  a  soul  be  made 
merry  because  outward  goods  increase  ?  How  beggarly  the 
conception !  How  stultified  the  man  appears  by  this  very 
address  to  himself!  He  proposed  to  feed  that  which  was  di- 
vine with  that  which  was  essentially  animah  He  had  no  holy 
thoughts ;  no  merciful  inclinations ;  he  had  no  chastened  and 
purified  aspirations ;  he  had  no  sweet  and  loving  afiections ;  he 
had  nothing  that  was  glorious  in  holiness  or  beautiful  m  any 
wise.  But, "  Oh  my  soul,"  said  he, "  take  thine  ease."  How 
many  men  there  are  that  try  to  quiet  their  souls !  How 
many  men  there  are  that  say  to  their  uneasiness, "  Why  art 
thou  disquieted  within  me,  O  my  soul  ?  Art  thou  not  rich  ?" 
A  man's  soul  rich  because  his  pocket  is  rich  ?  How  many 
men  say, "  Oh  soul,  what  wilt  thou  ?  What  have  I  not  done 
for  thee  ?  Look  abroad  and  behold  the  fields.  They  are  all 
thine.  Look  upon  all  these  harvests.  They  are  thine.  Glance 
up  the  mountain  side,  and  measure  all  the  stately  trees  there- 
on. All  these  things  are  thine ;  and  all  these  mansions ;  and 
all  these  titles  and  bonds ;  and  all  this  silver  and  gold."  And 
the  poor  smothered  soul  says, "  I  will  have  none  of  them." 
The  soul — has  it  a  mouth  ?  Can  it  eat,  as  a  man's  body  can  ? 
The  soul — is  it  a  broker  and  exchanger  of  money  ?  Does  it 
love  to  hear  the  clink  of  gold  and  silver  ?    Is  that  the  soul  ? 

This  man  of  the  parable  has  not  committed  a  crime ;  he 
has  not  committed  any  unvirtuous  action;  as  you  will  take 
notice,  he  was  a  husbandman  without  apparent  blemish  or 
dishonesty,  acquiring  property  by  legitimate  means.  But — 
mark  the  point  of  admonition.  He  does  it  without  gratitude 
to  God  or  humanity  to  his  fellow-men.     And  he  attempts  to 


432  The  Rich  Fool. 

feed  his  soul  with  these  outward  things,  and  does  not  know 
that  the  soul  must  have  something  other  and  better  than 
these  wherewithal  to  feed.. 

"  But  God  said  unto  him,  Thou  fool,  this  night  thy  soul 
shall  he  required  of  thee :  then  whose  shall  those  things  be 
which  thou  hast  provided  ?" 

Do  you  take  notice  how  in  the  light  of  imagination  are 
contrasted  here  a  man's  convictions  and  thoughts  respecting 
himself,  and  God's  thoughts  about  him  ?  Was  there  a  single 
man  that  lived  within  a  day's  journey  of  this  man  that  did 
not  praise  him  ?  Was  this  man's  name  ever  mentioned  in  all 
the  region  round  about  but  that  men  said,  "  Ah !  one  of  the 
richest  and  most  honorable  men  in  the  community  ?"  When 
men  were  speaking  of  prosperity  and  thrift,  was  not  he  spoken 
of?  Were  there  not  pleasing  titles  addressed  to  him  when 
men  would  gain  his  friendship?  Did  not  the  man  weave 
his  own  title  out  of  these  expressions  of  men's  thoughts  re- 
specting him  ?  If  you  had  asked  him,  What  is  thy  name  ? 
he  would  have  said.  My  name  is  Tlie  rich  man.  What  is  thy 
name?  Prince  among  my  felloics.  What  is  thy  name ?  The 
abounding  man  ;  The  2'>rosperou8  man  /  TJie  eminent  man  / 
The  great  man  of  the  neighborhood ;  The  much-talhedrof  man. 
"What  is  his  name,  O  Lord  ?  Fool.  He  knew  every  name  but 
the  right  one.  The  probability  is  that  no  man  had  ever  ad- 
dressed him  by  his  true  title.  He  had  been  called  by  the 
name  of  his  childhood ;  but  that  was  not  his  name.  He  had 
been  called  by  names  bred  of  wealth ;  but  these  were  not  his 
names.  He  had  been  called  by  names  that  came  from  men's 
flatteries;  but  these  were  not  his  true  names.  When  God 
spoke  to  him  out  of  eternal  tnith,  he  said  to  him,  "  Thou 
fool !"  and  that  was  his  name.  It  is  very  strange  that  a  man 
should  live  to  be  forty  or  fifty  years  of  age  and  not  know  his 
own  name.  Oh,  how  many  men  there  are  in  this  congrega- 
tion who  have  not  the  slightest  conception  of  their  nature 
and  name.  If  I  were  to  call  out  "  Fool,  come  hither,"  who 
of  you  would  stir?    But  when  God  comes  to  call  men,  by- 


The  Eich  Fool.  433 

and-by,  with  that  irresistible  voice,  "  Fool,"  oh  my  soul,  is  it 
thou  that  then  wilt  be  obliged  to  hear  and  answer?  Are 
there  not  many  of  you  that  walk  in  honor,  and  are  girded 
about  with  praise,  who,  if  God  were  to  launch  your  title 
through  the  air  and  fix  it  quivering  in  you,  would  be  obliged 
hereafter,  by  this  strange  baptism  of  God,  to  wear  the  name 
"Fool?" 

What  a  contrast  there  was  between  the  apparent  and  the 
real  position  in  which  this  man  stood !  We  read  in  the  Bible 
of  men's  walking  m  a  vain  show.  We  read  the  exclamation 
of  him  of  old,  "  How  are  they  cast  down,  as  in  a  moment !" 
Here  was  a  man  in  the  very  focus  of  prosperity,  and  yet  he 
stood  within  a  hand's-breadth  of  his  own  grave.  He  seemed 
to  defend  himself  from  the  intrusion  of  misfortune,  and  yet 
he  was  soon  to  be  cast  down.  He  had  all  that  men  usually 
cov^t.  He  had  wrapped  himself  round  and  round  with  many 
coverings  of  wool,  and  silk,  and  fine  linen,  and  supplied  him- 
self Avith  abundant  stores  of  things  pleasant  to  the  eye,  and 
of  things  pleasant  to  the  palate,  and  was  honored  and  re- 
spected ;  and  now,  having  accompHshed  the  purposes  of  his 
life,  he  began  to  lay  himself  back,  as  it  were,  and  to  say  to 
himself, "  Now  the  toil  is  over ;  now  the  accomplishment  is 
reached ;  now  take  thine  ease."  And  what  sort  of  an  ease 
was  it  ?  "  Eat,  drink,  and  be  merry."  Self-indulgence  and 
lust,  which  is  the  end  and  outcome  of  very  much  of  the  pros- 
perity of  this  world.  Self-indulgent  pampering,  selfish  luxu- 
ry— this  was  it.  And  he  seemed  to  himself,  he  seemed  to 
men,  to  have  reached  the  very  clunax  at  the  very  moment 
the  hand  of  God  was  extended  to  smite  him  down  utterly 
and  forever. 

"Then  whose  shall  these  things  be  which  thou  hast  pro- 
vided?" 

Men  do  not  think  of  that.  "It  is  mine"  occupies  the  whole 
hemisphere  of  men's  thoughts.  There  are  very  few  that  look 
beyond.  There  are  very  few  that  have  the  courage  faithful- 
ly and  truly  to  trace  out  what  shall  become  of  their  posses- 

II.— E  E 


43.1:  The  Eich  Fool. 

sions  hereafter,  that  they  have  so  carefully  amassed,  for 
which  they  have  sacrificed  so  much  of  duty,  for  which  often 
they  have  sold  themselves.  All  this  man's  estate  should  be 
scattered.  It  should  no  more  be  gathered  under  one  name. 
The  implication  is  that  it  would  be  squandered.  Some  com- 
mentators think  that  that  night  he  should  be  set  upon  by 
robbers,  his  life  destroyed,  and  his  treasures  taken. 

Consider,  next,  Christ's  most  searching  application.  "  So 
is  he" — that  is,  so  is  every  one — "that  layeth  up  treasure  for 
himself,  and  is  not  rich  toward  God." 

What  means  this  so  P  Just  as  great  a  fool  as  this  poor 
rich  fool,  just  as  absurd  as  he  was  in  the  sight  of  angels  and 
of  God,  and  just  as  imperiled. 

It  does  not  require,  then,  that  a  man  should  be  a  criminal 
in  order  to  destroy  himself.  Nay,  it  does  not  require  that  a 
man  should  be  immoral,  nor  that  he  should  acquire  his  j^)Os- 
sessions  by  avaricious  wrong-douag.  A  man  may  never  vary 
from  the  truth,  may  never  do  a  dishonest  deed ;  he  may  fol- 
low a  calling  that  is  perfectly  allowable;  he  may  amass 
riches  legitimately ;  he  may  stand  in  the  midst  of  those 
riches,  and  no  man  may  be  able  to  lay  at  his  door  a  single 
charge ;  not  one  may  be  able  to  say  to  him, "  Thou  hast  de- 
frauded me ;"  not  one  may  be  able  to  show  him  a  crooked 
place  in  the  line  that  his  life  has  drawn ;  he  may  be  ajjproved 
before  men ;  and  yet  God  may  say  to  him,  "  Thou  fool !" 
Why  ?  Simply  because  he  has  made  himself  rich  ?  No ! 
But  because  he  is  rich  only  toward  himself;  he  is  not  rich 
toward  God. 

Why,  is  not  that  the  life  of  the  animal,  to  be  rich  toward 
himself?  Is  not  the  browsing  ox  rich  toward  himself?  Sleek 
and  fat  is  he,  but  in  what  other  direction  is  he  rich  ?  What 
does  the  ox  think  ?  He  does  not  think — ^he  browses.  What 
do  the  swine  think?  They  do  not  think — they  eat.  What 
does  the  bird  of  prey  think?  Nothing — he  hungers  and 
searches  for  prey.  But  man  was  meant  to  be  a  creature  of 
thought,  and  of  imagination,  and  of  moral  feeling,  and  of  a 


The  Rich  Fool.  435 

character  that  is  to  prepare  him  for  converse  with  God  aud 
angels  in  the  other  sphere ;  and  a  man  that  spends  all  his 
moral  forces  making  himself  rich  in  this  life,  and  not  rich  to- 
ward God,  is  he  not  a  fool,  and  bankrupt  ?  The  richer  he  is 
the  more  bankrupt  he  is.  Are  there  not  many  persons  here 
who  are  rich  in  industry?  But  Avhat  hast  thou  toward  God? 
what  thoughts?  what  obedience?  what  love?  what  grati- 
tude ?  what  complacency  ?  What  is  God  to  thy  soul  ?  Are 
there  not  many  men  who  are  rich  in  morality,  w^alkino-  cir- 
cumspectly, with  clean  hands,  and  placing  their  feet  in  a  right 
place  Avithal  ?  And  yet,  what  do  they  lack  ?  But  a  little  ? 
Oh  moral  man,  you  have  taken  care  of  your  head,  your  eye, 
your  ear.  Every  sense  has  been  cared  for.  You  have  taken 
care  of  your  body— dear,  dainty  body !  You  have  solaced  it 
with  linen,  and  woolen,  aiM  silk.  You  have  taken  care  of 
that  precious  stomach  of  thine  by  riches,  by  dainties  and  del- 
icacies. Thy  stomach  shall  not  rise  up  in  judgment  against 
thee.  Bountiful  hast  thou  been  as  a  master  to  that.  But 
there  is  immortality  beyond  this  veil.  There  is  a  soul  that 
can  not  die.  What  hast  thou  done  for  that  soul  ?  Oh  moral 
man,  thou  art  to  live  in  the  presence  of  God.  Wliere  is  thy 
title,  and  where  are  thy  tastes  ?  Thou  art  to  sjaeak  another 
language  than  that  of  men  upon  earth.  Speak  now  some  sen- 
tences of  the  heavenly  tongue.  Thou  art  to  be  brighter  than 
the  stars  if  thy  destiny  be  fulfilled,  but  where  are  the  signs 
and  tokens  of  it?  Ten  years  since  thy  majority — twenty 
years — thirty  adult  years,  and  all  spent  in  pampering  that 
which  goes  down  to  dust !  Your  bones  do  not  inherit  im- 
mortality. Flesh  and  blood  shall  not  enter  the  kingdom  of 
God.  Holy  thoughts  and  the  power  of  thinking  them,  heav- 
enly aspirations  and  the  power  of  realizing  them — it  is  these 
things  that  belong  to  God's  kingdom.  It  is  these  that  can 
not  die  and  that  the  world  can  not  touch. 

Thou  hast  been  rich  toward  thy  lower  self,  but  thou  hast 
not  been  rich  toward  God.  Of  all  dreamy  speculations,  of 
all  unreal  things,  of  all  things  that  seem  like  the  last  vanish- 


436  The  Eich  Fool. 

ing  vaj^or  of  the  sky,  like  the  last  lingering  light  of  the  even- 
ing, God  has  seemed  to  you  the  most  mystic  and  remote,  the 
most  ineffable  and  impalpable,  the  most  unreal ;  and  yet  God 
is  the  great  reality  of  time  and  eternity,  the  only  absolute 
something.  All  your  thought-power,  and  time,  and  strength 
have  been  squandered  on  the  unsubstantial — the  rea\  as  you 
call  it.  All  your  time  has  been  wasted  in  impoverishing 
your  true  self. 

I  do  not  reprobate  enterprise ;  I  do  not  reprobate  blame- 
less riches ;  but  all  things  are  in  vain  in  which  God  has  no 
partnership.  No  man  can  do  business  alone  in  this  world 
and  be  safe.  If  you  love,  it  is  God  and  you  that  should  love. 
If  you  aspire  to  power,  it  should  be  God  and  ambition  in 
you  that  should  work  together.  If  you  build  riches,  take  care ; 
there  must  be  in  the  firm  one  otheAiame — God.  His  will  must 
be  in  you,  working  in  all  things,  or  all  your  work  is  vain. 

Consider,  in  the  light  of  this  instructive  parable,  the  perils 
that  lie  hidden  in  every  man's  life.  We  know  them  occa- 
sionally, because  they  break  out  before  us.  And  yet  here  is, 
as  it  were,  a  comprehensive  and  generic  instruction,  more 
striking  because  it  is  pictorial.  This  man  stood  in  the  midst 
of  apparent  life  and  health.  There  were  no  signs  of  danger 
in  the  heaven  ;  there  were  none  upon  the  earth  ;  there  were 
no  signs  in  his  body ;  he  was  full  of  cheer  and  happiness. 
He  was  congratulating  himself  He  tossed  off  his  wine.  He 
could  not  refrain  himself  "  Oh  soul,  happy  soul,  how  fortu- 
nate to  come  mto  the  possession  of  such  a  man  as  I  am !  Oh 
hajjpy  soul,  eat,  drink,  and  be  merry."  And  he  said  this  in 
the  face  of  the  ghostliest  death,  that  grinned  close  to  his  red 
cheek.  He  could  not  see  him.  He  could  not  feel  the  breath 
of  his  coming.  There  was  no  mildew  in  the  air.  And  yet 
this  man  stood  side  by  side  with  the  tomb.  Death  was  his 
nearest  neighbor.  Death  was  his  sure  companion.  At  the 
very  moment  when  he  was  congratulatuig  his  soul  on  its 
abounding  future.  Death  had  already  laid  his  hand  upon  him. 
"  This  night !  this  night  r  said  God. 


The  Eich  Fool.  437 

What  a  translation  out  of  the  arrogance  of  wealth,  out  of 
the  supremacy  of  selfishness,  out  of  multiplied  resources  that 
had  been  perverted  to  the  pampering  of  his  own  lower  na- 
ture, while  he  forgot  God,  and  did  not  care  for  his  fellow- 
men  !  To  be  thus  taken  in  an  instant,  unthinking  and  un- 
prepared, into  the  presence  of  his  God — what  a  change  it  was ! 
And  yet,  "  This  night  shall  thy  soul  be  required  of  thee." 

Ah !  my  friends,  his  was  not  the  only  hidden  peril.  There 
is  a  hidden  peril  for  every  one  of  us.  In  the  garden,  and  be- 
hind the  rose  it  lurks ;  in  the  orchard,  and  behmd  the  redo- 
lent bough ;  in  the  picture,  while  yet  the  artist's  brush  is 
laying  on  the  pigment ;  in  all  your  building,  while  the  trowel 
is  rmging  upon  the  uprising  wall ;  in  all  your  digging,  wheth- 
er in  the  furrow  or  m  the  garden ;  in  the  erection  of  more 
ample  warehouses  and  stores  for  the  keeping  of  your  goods 
— in  all  these  there  is  peril. 

There  is  not  far  from  youth  that  hidden  certainty  of  death. 
I  am  speaking  to  some  that  I  shall  never  speak  to  again. 
You  are  marked.  You  are  going  away,  and  my  eye  shall 
never  rest  on  you  again.  There  are  some  of  you  now  within 
a  handbreadth  of  the  grave,  and  yet  it  doth  not  ajjpear  who 
it  is.  If  I  were  to  say  that  some  sharj)-shooter,  hidden,  would 
launch  the  fated  bullet  into  the  midst  of  this  assembly,  with 
what  terror  would  the  whole  of  you  rise !  and  yet  Death 
stands  with  bow  drawn  back  to  the  iittermost,  and  that  ar- 
row is  just  on  the  string  that  will  speed  to  some  of  you. 
You  seem  strong  to-day.  To-morrow  you  shall  be  weak. 
You  seem  to-day  to  be  honorable.  Ere  long  eclipse  is  com- 
ing upon  your  fair  name.  You  seem  to  be  reveling  in  pleas- 
ures disallowed;  but  God  marks  you.  You  think  that  you 
are  hidden  from  the  eye  of  God  because  you  are  hidden  from 
the  eye  of  man,  but  it  is  a  delusion.  God's  eye  is  ever  on 
you,  and  your  tomb  is  close  by  you.  There  is  no  contrast 
more  awful  to  thoughful  men,  and  no  infatuation  more  strik- 
ing, than  that  which  exists  between  the  reality  of  a  man's 
condition  and  that  man's  own  thought  of  his  condition. 

If  God  should  call  you  in  a  single  night,  and  if  it  should 


438  The  Rich  Fool. 

be  this  night,  tell  me,  are  you  prepared  to  make  your  final 
account?  Are  you  prepared  to  leave  things  in  this  world 
just  as  they  are,  with  no  more  done?  Are  you  prepared  to 
leave  things  undone  as  they  are  ?  Is  there  no  justice  that 
you  owe  ?  Have  you  filled  up  the  measure  of  bounty  ?  Is 
there  no  reparation  to  be  made  any  where,  and  no  restora- 
tion ?  Is  there  nothing  to  be  repented  of?  Is  there  no 
half-fulfilled  duty  of  love  ?  Are  there  no  words  to  be  re- 
called ?  Is  there  no  quarrel  to  be  reconciled  ?  Is  there  no 
cleansing  of  the  heart  of  vile  thoughts,  of  wrong  dispositions, 
or  of  base  passions  and  appetites  ?  Are  you  clean  as  one 
that  emerges  from  the  stream  bathed  and  purified  ?  "Would 
your  soul  rise  up  out  of  your  body  unsullied  if  to-night  God 
should  call  it  ?  Are  you  prepared  to  meet  your  Judge,  who 
is  of  purer  eyes  than  to  behold  iniquity?  Is  there  no  taint, 
no  sully,  no  selfishness,  no  cruelty  of  pride,  no  self-indulgence, 
no  frivolity  of  vanity,  no  waste  of  conscience,  no  death-poi- 
son ?  How  is  it  with  you  ?  If  God  should  call  your  soul  to- 
night, are  you  prepared  to  meet  him  ?  Is  it  not  just  as  our 
Savior  made  it  to  be  in  the  parable  ?  Are  not  men  living  in 
a  vain  show,  not  a  handbreadth  from  death,  though  they 
seem  to  themselves  to  be  far  from  it  and  secure  ? 

Call  up  again  that  point  of  the  parable  in  which  the  man 
is  represented  as  addressing  his  soul.  Is  there  any  thing  in 
this  world  that  is  more  painful  than  the  efibrts  of  men  after 
happiness  ?  When  you  yourself  look  out  upon  your  neigh- 
bors, are  you  not  a  just  critic  of  the  foolishness  of  men  in  the 
ways  in  which  they  attempt  to  secure  happiness  ?  and  yet, 
are  you  not  substantially  in  the  same  way  yourself? 

My  friends,  there  is  a  hunger  of  the  body.  We  feed  that 
with  bread  and  with  meat.  But  men  seem  not  to  have 
learned  yet  hoAV  to  feed  that  hunger  of  the  soul  which  breaks 
out  in  discontent,  in  repinings,  in  complainings  sometimes ; 
which  breaks  out  more  often  in  aspirations  and  yearnings,  if 
one  be  of  a  noble  turn  of  mind ;  which  manifests  itself  never 
so  strikingly  as  in  that  way.  For,  as  you  can  not  take  a  for- 
est flower,  and  hold  it  up  to  the  sun  to  make  it  more  beauti- 


The  Rich  Fool.  .  439 

ful,  but  it  casts  a  shadow  on  the  ground  by  the  very  light 
which  makes  it  bright,  so,  in  mortal  experience,  there  is  no 
pleasure  that  does  not  trail  after  it  a  shadow ;  there  is  no  ex- 
perience by  which  a  man  attempts  to  satisfy  his  soul  that 
does  not  leave  behmd  a  certain  bitterness.  And  what  is  that 
but  the  soul  saying  "  I  am  not  content ;  I  am  not  satisfied  ?" 
There  are  joys  that  satisfy.  Of  them  Christ  spoke.  Drink 
of  the  sweetest  water,  and  of  the  coolest  that  gushes  from 
the  side  of  the  cool  rock,  and  you  will  thirst  again ;  but,  says 
Christ, "  He  that  taketh  of  the  water  that  I  shall  give  him, 
shall  never  thirst."  You  will  hunger  if  you  feed  from  the 
loaf;  but  Christ  says, "  I  am  the  bread  of  life.  He  that  com- 
eth  to  me  shall  never  hunger  again." 

Oh,  my  friends,  go  with  me  in  imagination  along  the  streets 
of  New  York.  Let  us,  as  if  we  were  touched  with  the  divine 
wisdom,  as  if  we  were  companions  of  God,  walk  the  ways  of 
greatness.  Tliere  stand  two  giants,  one  with  overt  might, 
and  the  other  with  secret  and  covert  cunning,  matching  them- 
selves before  men,  and  shaking  the  market  with  their  foot- 
steps, and  bringing  on  themselves  the  eyes  of  all.  Which 
shall  have  the  mastery  in  the  great  battle  of  riches  ?  All  the 
market  stands  back  to  see  the  fight  of  the  giants.  One  shall 
count  his  money  by  millions  and  millions,  and  the  other's 
money  is  uncountable.  No  man  knows  the  depths  of  their 
exchequers  and  coffers ;  and  ten  thousand  there  are  looking 
with  greedy  admiration  upon  the  one  and  upon  the  other. 
Oh  God,  who  are  they  ?  With  phosphoric  light  I  see  stand- 
ing over  their  portals  the  divine  hand-writing, "  Fool !  fool !" 
And  God  says  to  them, "In  a  year  or  two  whose  shall  all 
these  things  be  ?"  f 

I  see  men  that  attract  to  themselves  the  eyes  of  all  the 
crowd.  What  equipage  could  be  more  resplendent  ?  They 
have  gathered  around  themselves  that  which  seems  to  con- 
summate their  felicity  upon  earth.  They  roll  over  the  pave- 
ment, and  roll  through  the  park.  They  are  found  upon 
courses  where  all  men  do  congregate  for  admiration  of  such 
things.     They  are  at  the  climax  of  exhilaration  and  enjoy- 


440  .  The  Eich  Fool. 

ment.  "  Oh  happy  man !"  men  cry  out.  "No  returning  echo 
comes, "  Happy  man ;"  but  muffled,  almost  silent,  comes  back 
from  the  heavens, "  Fool !  fool !" 

.  I  look  upon  newly  wedded  love.  It  is  the  dew  of  heaven 
that  has  fallen  upon  young  flowers.  K  it  knows  how  to  rise 
up  from  out  of  the  senses,  and  to  frame  itself  into  divine  lov- 
ing; if  it  knows  how  to  draw  its  pictures  upon  the  back- 
ground of  eternity ;  and  if  it  twines  itself  round  and  round 
the  bosom  and  the  heart  of  God,  oh,  this  is  soul-feeding  love. 
But  if  to  each  the  other  is  an  idol ;  if  each  extracts  from 
the  other  but  an  earthly  love ;  if  there  is  no  other  founda- 
tion than  that  which  stands  under  mortal  experience,  then, 
while  we  look  uj^on  them,  and  congratulate  them,  and  say, 
"  Oh  happy  lovers !"  God's  voice  suddenly  distills  through 
the  air  and  says, "  Fools  !  fools  !" 

Mother,  if  that  child  in  thine  arms  is  God's  child,  and  if 
through  that  child,  as  through  a  lens,  thou  art  looking  at  im- 
mortality and  glory,  blessed  be  thou  of  women ;  but  if  this 
child  of  thine  is  only  a  mortal  child,  an  idol  indeed,  and  in  it 
thou  seest  only  this  world,  oh  fool ! 

Young  man,  with  health  and  strength,  with  ambition  and 
opportunity,  if  these  take  hold  upon  glory  and  immortality, 
oh,  wise  art  thou ;  but  if  they  stop  this  side  of  that,  oh,  fool 
art  thou.  It  is  a  sad  thing  to  have  a  price  put  into  a  man's 
hands  to  get  wisdom,  and  to  squander  it.  Oh,  it  is  a  sad 
thing  to  be  built  for  God,  and  end  only  with  the  dust  which 
shall  cover  you.  It  is  a  sad  thing  for  one  to  be  brought  up 
under  the  sound  of  the  Gospel,  to  know  his  own  necessities, 
to  hear  the  truth  of  God  sounding  in  his  conscience,  to  be 
touched  in  his  heart  again  and  agaii^;  it  is  a  sad  thing  for  a 
man  to  see  all  the  truth  that  gleams  through  the  horizon  of 
the  Gospel,  and  after  all  to  die  as  the  fool  dieth.  "  So  is  ev- 
ery one  that  layetli  up  treasure  for  himself,  and  is  not  rich 
toward  God." 

When  I  was  a  lad,  the  old  bell  in  the  belfry  used  to  ring  a 
knell  the  sound  of  which  I  could  not  get  out  of  my  head  for 
a  month  after  hearing  it.     A  young  companion  of  mine  died 


The  Eich  Fool.  441 

when  I  "svas  absent  at  school,  and  I  came  back  on  the  day  of 
his  funeral  and  heard  that  bell  toll.  And  what  tolling  that 
was  of  the  old  New  England  belfries  !  How  the  sound  rever- 
berated, and  rocked  and  rolled,  and  clung  to  the  air,  as  if  it 
never  would  die  out !  How  that  old  bell  filled  the  whole  air 
full,  ringing  and  ringing  out  the  solemn  tidings  of  mortality ! 

Oh  that  there  might  be  some  ringings  from  out  of  the 
belfry  of  God's  heart  that  should  fill  the  whole  air  of  our 
thoughts  and  feelings  in  the  same  way !  And  if  there  be  one 
stroke,  if  there  be  one  bell  whose  tongue  should  more  than 
another  syllable  to  us  lessons  of  instruction,  it  seems  to  me  to 
be  this :  "  So  is  every  man  that  layeth  up  treasure  for  him- 
self, and  is  not  rich  toward  God." 

"What  are  you  laying  up  for  God  ?  Wherewithal  are  you 
rich  toward  God  ?  "  I  am  a  Christian,  I  am  a  professor  of 
religion,"  says  one.  So  are  many  that  shall  say  in  that  day, 
"  Lord,  thou  hast  taugflt  in  our  streets.  We  have  eaten  and 
drunk  in  thy  presence."  And  he  shall  say  to  them,  "  I  never 
knew  you."  Beware  lest,  wlien  you  rise  to  go  to  your  account, 
suddenly  speeding  through  your  wealth,  breaking  through 
your  prosperity,  coming  out  from  the  midst  of  your  dissever- 
ed riches,  and  rising  into  the  presence  of  God,  he  shall  say  to 
you, "  I  never  knew  you."  Let  love  die  here ;  let  my  name 
perish  here ;  let  my  house  pass  to  another ;  let  my  children 
wither  as  leaves  upon  a  bough  that  has  been  plucked  off;  let 
my  life  be  as  him  who  dwelleth  in  a  desert  overblown  with 
choking  sands,  if  in  that  moment,  when  I  stand  in  heaven, 
God  shall  say  to  me, "  Enter ;  thou  art  welcome."  In  that  one 
hour  I  shall  reap  more  than  compensation  for  all.  But,  though 
my  house  be  builded  of  gold  and  silver,  and  my  head  crown- 
ed with  chaplets  of  roses,  and  all  sweet  delights  wait  on  my 
feet,  and  my  life  be  one  long-rolling  symphony  of  joy,  that 
one  word,  "  Depart !  I  know  you  not,"  will  overmaster  and 
storm  out  of  the  memory  the  whole  of  this  joy.  "  What 
shall  it  profit  a  man  if  he  gain  the  whole  world  and  lose  his 
own  soul  ?" 


XXL 


ntDli'3  ICniiiu. 


Preached  in  Plymouth  Church,  Brooklyn,  Sabbath  morning, 
April  sth,  1868. 


Jacob's  Laddee. 


"And  Jacob  went  out  from  Beersheba,  and  went  toward  Ilaran,  And  he 
lighted  upon  a  certain  place,  and  tarried  there  all  niglit,  because  the  sun 
was  set ;  and  he  took  of  the  stones  of  that  place,  and  put  them  for  his 
pillows,  and  lay  down  in  that  place  to  sleep.  And  he  dreamed,  and  be- 
hold a  ladder  set  up  on  the  earth,  and  the  top  of  it  reached  to  heaven : 
and  behold  the  angels  of  God  ascending  and  descending  on  it.  And,  be- 
hold, the  Lord  stood  above  it,  and  said,  I  am  the  Lord  God  of  Abraham 
thy  father,  and  the  God  of  Isaac  :  the  land  whereon  thou  liest,  to  thee 
wiUI  give  it,  and  to  thy  seed." — Genesis,  xx%-iii.,  10-13. 

Befoee  there  was  a  written  revelation — before  temples 
and  synagogues  were  built,  Jacob  lived.  God  taught  men 
then,  not  through  the  priesthood,  nor  through  an  accumula- 
ted literature,  but  by  nature,  and  through  visions  and  dreams. 
God  treated  the  infant  race  by  such  instruments  of  instruc- 
tion as  befitted  their  infancy.  A  few  great  truths  had  been 
accepted,  but  the  exceeding  riches  of  moral  truth,  and  all  the 
wealth  of  society  wrought  out  by  it,  was  as  yet  undeveloped 
and  unsuspected.  Even  common  morality  had  but  feeble 
hold  then.  Good  men,  when  pressed,  easily  fell,  and  without 
compunction,  into  sins  which,  if  committed  in  our  day,  would 
discredit  one's  reputation  forever.  But  there  is  much  difier- 
ence  between  sin  now,  with  all  the  world  interpreting  recti- 
tude, and  sin  in  the  early,  infant  day  of  the  race,  when  very 
little  had  yet  been  found  out. 

Jacob,  having  quarreled  with  Esau,  went  forth,  at  parental 
suggestion,  to  seek  his  fortune.  He  was  alone.  All  familiar 
scenes  were  left  behind  him.  His  heart  must  have  had  many 
a  swell  that  day,  as  he  ventured  farther  and  farther  into 
strange  scenes.     Every  step  set  him  wider  apart  from  his 


4ri6  Jacob's  Ladder. 

whole  life's  hopes.  A  rugged  man,  and  accustomed  to  a 
shepherd's  life,  it  was  no  hardshij^,  when  the  sun  was  set,  to 
seek  his  rest  in  the  open  air,  upon  the  ground,  and  with  no 
softer  pillow  than  a  stone.  As  hunger  is  said  to  be  the  best 
sauce  for  plain  food,  so  fatigue  will  make  stones  seem  soft  as 
feathers.  He  had  no  reason  to  complain  of  that  night's  lodg- 
ing. There  are  many  bad  men  who  sleep  on  down,  but  dream 
of  purgatory ;  here  was  a  good  man  sleeping  on  the  ground, 
yet  dreaming  of  heaven.  It  was  the  better  fare ;  for  Jacob 
saw  a  vision — a  ladder  standing  on  the  ground,  and  reaching 
up  to  heaven.  It  need  not  have  been  a  very  long  one  for 
that,  for  heaven  is  not  far  from  every  good  man.  Tlien  an- 
gels appeared,  and  ascended  and  descended  along  this  lad- 
der of  the  vision ;  but  above  them  all,  he  beheld  his  father's 
God — Jehovah.  In  all  the  discoveries  made  to  him,  if  his 
heart  was  homesick  (and  I  take  it  that  it  was),  there  are  no 
words  that  touched  deeper  than  these ;  "  I  am  the  God  of  thy 
father." 

Here,  then,  were  three  things  to  the  old  patriarch :  a  way 
set  up  between  earth  ^nd  heaven,  making  a  visible  connec- 
tion between  the  ground  on  which  he  stood  (or  slept)  and 
the  sky ;  the  free  circulation  along  that  way  of  great  powers 
and  ministering  influences ;  and  God,  the  supreme,  inspiring, 
directing,  rewarding,  or  punishing  force,  eminent  over  all. 
All  these  were  included  in  the  simple  vision. 

Consider  what  the  vision  must  have  meant  to  him,  as  he 
turned  it  over  in  his  mind.  He  had  just  broken  ofi"  from 
home.  He  that  day  had  become  his  own  master.  The  fu- 
ture was  all  to  be  made.  Before  him,  in  this  exigency,  arose 
a  symbol  which  seemed  to  say, "  Whatever  plan  you  shall 
henceforth  set  up,  though  it  begins  upon  the  ground,  let  its 
top  reach  to  the  heaven.  Though  your  undertakings  base 
upon  the  earth,  let  them  stretch  out  and  up  until  they  find  a 
resting-place  and  a  consummation  above.  Do  nothing  on 
earth  that  may  not  be  known  and  felt  in  heaven." 

Then,  again,  he  saw  angels ;  as  if  God,  in  the  absence  of 


Jacob's  Ladder  447 

all  the  incitements  to  holiness  which  bless  our  lives,  would, 
by  a  striking  and  unforgetable  picture,  impress  upon  him 
that  there  are  other  powers  working  for  men  besides  their 
own ;  that  right  aims,  pursued  by  right  methods,  carry  along 
with  them  great  moral  influences,  which,  though  invisible  and 
not  easily  calculated,  are  God's  very  angels  ministrant. 

And,  finally,  Jehovah  stood,  the  Father,  the  Guide,  the 
Benefactor,  saying,  by  no  words,  but  by  a  vision  yet  more 
impressive,  "  I  am  thy  God :  thou  art  not  alone.  The  whole 
world  is  mine ;  and  though  thou  hast  left  thine  earthly  fa- 
ther, thou  art  not  left  of  thy  heavenly  Father.  Go  forth. 
Angels  attend  thee.  I  will  not  leave  thee  nor  forsake  thee. 
Serve  me,  and  I  will  serve  thee." 

Was  not  that  a  good  outfit  for  a  young  man  on  the  very 
eve  of  his  opening  life  ?  Could  any  patrimony ;  could  an}- 
patron ;  could  any  association  or  partnership ;  could  any 
promise  or  realization,  be  worth  as  much  to  him,  starting  in 
life,  as  that  faith  in  God,  and  in  the  angels  of  God,  and  in  in- 
tegrity in  all  human  dealing  ?  Was  not  the  moral  influence 
of  such  an  experience  worth  more  to  him  than  lands,  or  flocks 
and  herds,  or  silver  and  gold  ? 

Tliere  comes  a  time  when  every  young  man  or  maiden 
must  start  out  uj)on  life.  The  seed  that  ripens  upon  the  stalk 
must  be  shaken  ofi",  and  be  planted,  and  grow  upon  its  own 
root.  The  scion  is  cut  away  from  the  parent  branch  and 
grafted  upon  another  stalk.  It  is  at  the  starting  out  in  life 
that  every  one  needs  an  inspiration,  and  will  have  it,  either 
good  or  bad.  It  is  just  at  this  point  that  every  one  needs, 
in  some  way  suited  to  his  genius,  his  circumstances  and  con- 
dition, that  there  should  happen  to  him  substantially  that 
which  happened  to  Jacob ;  that  in  his  vision  (which  may  be 
upon  his  bed,  or  may  be  one  of  those  waking  visions  which 
men  have)  there  should  be  a  ladder,  which,  touching  the 
earth,  connects  it  with  the  heaven ;  and  a  vision  of  God's  an- 
gels passing  between  the  Father  and  his  earthly  child. 

Let  me,  then,  in  a  few  words,  this  morning,  not  so  much 


448  Jacob's  Ladder 

preach  as  talk  with,  you  of  your  visions  ;  and  I  address  my- 
self mainly  to  the  young — to  those  that  are  just  entering 
ujjon  life.  Shall  your  ladder,  standing  on  the  earth,  reach  to 
heaven  ?  or  is  your  ladder,  in  its  whole  length,  flat  along  the 
ground  ?  Stop  one  moment,  and  think,  you  who  have  start- 
ed out,  or  are  about  starting.  By  ladder  I  mean  your  plans 
in  life.  Are  they,  all  of  them,  lying  upon  the  ground,  or, 
though  they  begin  there,  do  they  really  go  up,  and  conscious- 
ly take  hold  of  the  future  and  of  the  spiritual  ?  Man  must 
not  avoid  the  world.  Every  ladder  should  stand  upon  the 
ground.  The  ground  is  a  very  good  place  to  start  from,  but 
a  very  poor  place  to  stop  on.  No  man  can  be  a  Christian  by 
separating  himself  from  his  kind.  No  man  can  be  a  Chris- 
tian by  avoiding  business ;  and  if  you  transact  business,  it 
must  be  transacted  in  the  accustomed  ways.  No  man  need 
seek,  while  in  the  body  and  on  the  ground,  to  get  rid  of  phys- 
ical things  or  physical  laws.  There  is  no  saintship  gained 
by  a  violation  of  those  economics  by  which  God  designed  to 
develop  our  virtues  and  our  manhood.  Every  man,  there- 
fore, is  to  be  a  Christian ;  but,  at  the  same  time,  he  is  to  be  a 
laboring  man,  a  thinking  man,  a  working  man.  Activity  in 
earthly  things  is  not  inconsistent  with  true  piety.  A  right 
industry,  a  right  enterprise,  and  right  ambitions  in  these,  do 
not  stand  in  the  way  of  true  religion.  They  not  only  per- 
fectly harmonize  with  it,  but  they  are  indispensable  to  it.  I 
can  scarcely  conceive  of  a  lazy  man  being  a  Christian.  Even 
the  chronicles  of  those  that  have  sought  by  retiring  to  caves, 
and  thus  separating  themselves  from  human  life,  to  live  a 
Christian  life,  show  that  while  they  escaped  from  men,  they 
did  not  escape  from  the  temptations  which  sprang  up  through 
the  passions  of  human  nature.  A  human  life,  in  its  ordinaiy 
condition  in  Christian  communities,  is  favorable  (if  one  be 
wise  to  know  how  to  employ  it)  to  the  production  of  morali- 
ty, of  virtue,  and  of  true  piety.  A  man's  ladder,  then,  should 
stand  on  the  ground.  A  man  that  is  going  to  be  a  Christian 
should  be  a  man  among  men — joirued  in  interest  with  them. 


Jacob's  Ladder.  449 

sympathizing  in  their  pursuits,  active  in  daily  duties ;  not 
above  the  enterprise,  the  thoughtfulness,  and  the  proper 
amount  of  care  that  belong  to  worldly  avocations.  This  is 
a  part  of  the  divine  economy ;  and  those  that  have  the  ro- 
mantic notion  of  piety,  that  it  is  something  that  lifts  them 
out  of  the  way  of  and  away  from  actual  worldly  cares,  mis- 
conceive totally  the  methods  of  divine  grace.  But,  while 
man's  plans  in  this  world  should  be  secular,  and  adapted  to 
the  great  laws  of  that  physical  condition  in  which  we  are 
born,  they  must  not  end  where  they  begin.  Woe  be  to  him 
that  uses  the  earth  for  the  earth,  or  whose  plans  are  wholly 
material,  beginning  and  ending  in  secularity  and  materiality ; 
who  means  by  fortune — riches,  and  nothing  else ;  who  means 
by  power — carnal,  temporal  jDower,  and  nothing  else-;  whose 
pleasure  consists  in  that  which  addresses  itself  to  the  senses, 
and  in  nothing  else.  Woe  be  to  him  who  lays  out  a  plan 
which  has  nothing  in  it  but  this  world.  At  the  very  time 
when  you  jDlant  your  ladder  on  the  ground,  you  must  see  to 
it  that  it  is  long  enough  to  reach,  and  that  it  does  reach,  and 
rest  its  top  in  heaven.  This  world  and  the  other  must  be 
consciously  connected  in  every  true  man's  life.  This  world 
is  shallow.  Our  atmosphere  is  smotheringly  near  to  us. 
There  is  no  manhood  possible  that  does  not  recognize  an  ex- 
istence beyond  our  horizon,  and  that  doesjiot  stretch  itself 
up  into  the  proportions,  at  least  ideal,  which  belong  to  it  as 
a  creature  of  the  Infinite.  And  even  if  one  were  to  look  only 
upon  natural  results  and  economic  courses,  he  is  best  pre^ 
pared  for  this  life  who  considers  this  life  to  be  made  up  of 
this  life  and  of  that  which  is  to  come.  In  every  outstarting 
in  life  it  is  not  enough  that  you  propose  to  yourself  to  do  well 
in  this  world — your  "  this  world"  must  reach  to  the  other. 

Along  every  man's  ladder  should  be  seen  God's  good  an- 
gels. You  are  not  at  liberty  to  execute  a  good  plan  with 
bad  instruments.  When  you  lay  the  course  of  your  life  out 
before  you,  and  say  to  yourself  that  you  propose  to  achieve 
in  your  mortal  life  such  and  such  things,  it  is  not  a  matter 

IL— F  F 


450  Jacob's  Ladder. 

of  indifference  to  you  how  you  achieve  them.  God's  angels 
must  ascend  and  descend  on  your  ladder,  otherwise  other 
and  worse  angels  will.  "When  youth  first  opens,  if  it  has 
been  Christianly  instructed,  I  think  the  impulses  generally 
are  noble  and  even  romantic.  Youth  characteristically  as- 
pires to  do  things  that  are  right,  and  to  do  them  in  a  right 
manner.  One  of  the  earliest  experiences  is  that  of  surprise 
and  even  horror  at  the  world's  ignoble  ways,  and  the  tem- 
porary withdrawal  of  the  young  soul  from  its  first  contacts 
with  life.  Its  first  comprehension  of  actual  life,  and  of  what 
must  be  done  in  the  world,  if  one  would  succeed,  violates 
its  romantic  notion  of  manly  truthfulness,  of  straightfor- 
wardness, of  honorable  dealings.  Almost  all  young  men 
come  up  to  that  period  of  life  at  which  they  are  to  break 
away  from  home,  and  go  out  into  the  world,  with  the  most 
generous  purposes.  They  seem  inspired  by  truth,  honesty, 
fidelity,  enterprise,  generosity,  honor,  and  even  heroism. 
These  all  belong  to  youthful  aspiration.  They  mean  never 
to  forsake  these  things.  They  mean  to  carry  these  qualities 
into  their  lives,  and  to  live  by  them.  Now  these  are  God's 
good  angels  to  you ;  not  that  there  are  none  better ;  but 
it  may  be  well  said  that  these  nobler  incitements,  and  mo- 
tives, and  aspirations  stand  along  the  line  of  a  young  man's 
plans  in  life  as  eo  many  angelic  messengers  by  which  he 
purposes  to  work  out  his  ideal  in  life.  Let  every  one  who 
begins  life,  then,  have  a  plan  along  which  are  clearly  seen 
noble  sentiments  and  convictions.  I  beseech  of  you,  my 
young  friends,  not  to  listen  to  any  man  who  tells  you  that 
it  is  a  pity  to  be  honest.  I  heard  of  a  man  but  this  week 
who  said, "  If  my  parents  had  only  brought  me  up  to  be  dis- 
honest, I  should  have  succeeded ;  but,  unfortunately  for  me, 
they  taught  me  to  be  honest,  and  I  could  never  get  over  it, 
and  every  body  in  consequence  has  cheated  me,  and  my  life 
is  not  a  success,"  A  man  wants  something  more  than  hon- 
esty, that's  certain.  There  is  one  other  quality  that  every 
body  wants,  and  that  is  good  sense,  which  this  man  evi- 


Jacob's  Ladder.  451 

dently  lacked.  That  intellectual  appareling,  we  conceive, 
precedes  all  other  things.  If  a  man  has  not  got  good  sense, 
heaven  help  him  !  "  What  shall  he  do  ?"  Do  just  as  the 
man  does  who  is  born  with  only  one  foot — limp.  "  But  can 
you  not  make  up  the  lack  of  good  sense  ?"  Can  you  make 
up  a  deficient  leg  ?  "  Are  some  men  then  born  so  ?"  Yes ; 
and  they  have  to  crutch  it  all  through  life.  But  if  a  man 
were  to  take  pattern  as  to  gait  and  dignity  of  demeanor, 
would  he  imitate  a  cripple,  or  would  he  imitate  a  full-grown, 
handsome  man  ?  And  if  you  are  reasoning  upon  human  life, 
will  you  take  your  ideal  of  what  is  most  fitting  and  becom- 
ing in  manhood  from  these  cynics,  these  skeptics,  these  men 
that  deride,  these  men  of  moral  unfaith  ?  No  man  is  fit  to  be 
your  model  who  has  not  those  distinguishing  qualities  which 
separate  manhood  from  the  brute,  and  lift  him  far  above  them. 
In  laying  down  your  plans  in  life,  then,  remember  that 
no  plan  is  fit  for  your  achievement  which  you  can  not 
achieve  by  open,  honest,  clean,  upright.  Christian  motives. 
You  can  not  afibi'd  to  succeed  by  any  other  course.  Your 
ladder,  though  standing  on  the  ground,  should  rest  its  top  in 
heaven ;  and  there  should  be  angels  constantly  passing  be- 
tween the  top  and  the  bottom.  It  is  bad  enough  to  have  a 
plan  that  begins  on  earth  and  stays  on  earth ;  but  for  a  man 
having  a  good  plan  to  consent  to  execute  it  from  base  senti- 
ments or  by  base  influences,  is  unpardonable.  Your  life  will 
task  and  prove  you.  Do  not,  however,  let  it  drive  away  from 
you  those  influences  which  overhung  your  childhood.  Have 
they  not  already  gone  from  some  of  you  ?  Has  not  an  en- 
amel already  formed  over  some  of  your  tender  feelings  ? 
Have  not  some  of  you  boasted  of  forgetfulness  ?  Have 
you  not  boasted  that  you  no  longer  remembered  or  were 
influenced  by  those  tender  impulses  ?  and  that  you  have 
strengthened  yourself  against  them?  that  you  have  devas- 
tated to  some  extent  purity,  delicacy,  refinement,  truth,  hon- 
or, justice,  and  rectitude  ?  Are  you  not  already  working 
down  toward  the  animal  conditions  of  life  ? 


452  Jacob's  Ladder. 

Do  not,  however,  trust  alone  to  those  generous  senti- 
ments. Morality  is  not  pieiy.  In  the  vision  of  Jacob  there 
was  not  alone  the  ladder  between  the  earth  and  heaven,  and 
the  angels  ascending  and  descending,  but  brightest,  and  best, 
and  grandest,  and  behind  all  the  angels,  stood  God,  saying  to 
him, "I  am  thy  father's  God."  Now  high  above  all  a  man's 
plans,  high  above  all  his  heroic  moral  resolves,  there  is  to  be 
a  living  trust  in  God ;  and  there  is  to  be  a  soul-connection 
between  ourselves  or  our  business  and  our  God.  All  our 
life  long  we  must  not  be  far  from  him.  Piety  must  quicken 
morality ;  then  life  Avill  be  safe,  and  will  be  successful. 

Here,  then,  is  a  general  schedule  of  a  right  life :  something 
to  do  that  is  right ;  a  plan  by  which  you  shall  execute  a 
right  life  by  right  instruments;  and  over  all,  the  benign, 
genial,  stimulating  influence  of  the  heavenly  Father.  Busi- 
ness, morality,  piety — these  three  should  be  coupled  togeth- 
er. They  are  the  trinity  of  influences  from  which  every  one 
should  act,  and  it  is  transcendently  important  that  young 
men  should  find  this  out  before  they  find  out  any  thing  else. 
Blessed  be  that  man  who,  going  from  his  father's  house,  and 
lying  down  to  sleep,  though  it  be  upon  the  ground,  and 
though  stones  be  under  his  head,  sees  a  ladder  between  heav- 
en and  earth,  typifying  his  future  life,  and  on  that  ladder  an- 
gels ascendmg  and  descending,  and  hears  God  saying  to  him, 
"  I  am  thy  God."  That  is  an  inspiration,  on  life's  threshold, 
worth  any  man's  aspiration. 

Let  me  apj^ly  this  a  little  more  in  detail : 

L  There  comes  a  time  when  the  maiden  departs  from  her 
father's  house.  She  is  called ;  she  answers,  and  departs.  All ! 
how  many  visions  of  angels  have  there  been ;  but  they  were 
not  gods.  How  many  have  gone  out  walking  on  flowers 
a  little  way,  but  soon  have  found  the  flowers  changed  to 
thorns.  How  many  have  gone  out  from  their  father's  house 
borne  on  the  seraphic  experience  of  love,  scarcely  touching 
the  ground  for  joyfulness,  to  find,  little  by  little,  that  love 
flowed  away  like  a  summer's  brook,  and  left  in  its  place  but 


Jacob's  Ladder.  453 

the  bare  channel  and  the  gravel.  How  many  have  gone  out 
to  pursue  a  fiction  which  perished  faster  than  snow  melts  in 
the  handling.  And  yet  every  maiden  must  go  forth  in  her 
appointed  time.  Blessed  are  they  who,  thus  going,  in  the 
very  first  day,  behold,  as  it  were,  God's  ladder  between 
heaven  and  earth,  and  God's  angels  ascending  and  descend- 
ing, and  behind  and  above  all,  God  himself!  See  to  it,  then, 
you  that  are  going  and  you  that  are  gone — see  to  it  that 
your  earliest  plans  in  the  married  life,  your  first  hopes,  in- 
clude a  true  love  to  God,  and  a  true  purpose  of  serving  him. 
It  is  not  enough  that  you  love  your  husband.  He  is  your 
head,  in  the  Lord.  He  stands  for  the  hour,  as  it  were,  inter- 
preting to  you  God's  love;  but  he  is  not  God.  Otherwise 
your  ladder  will  be  upon  the  ground,  too  short  to  reach  far- 
ther than  the  storm-cloud,  and  ere  long  the  winds  will  blow 
it  over.  Of  all  the  sad  things  in  this  world,  I  think  the  sad- 
dest is  the  leaf  that  tells  what  love  meant  to  be — and  the 
turning  of  the  leaf,  to  tell  what  love  has  been ;  one  all  blos- 
soms, the  other  all  ashes ;  one  all  smiles  and  gladness,  the 
other  tears  and  sadness.  Nothing  is  so  beautiful  as  the  tem- 
ple that  love  builds ;  nothing  is  so  miserable  as  the  service  of 
that  temple,  if  God  be  not  in  it. 

My  young  maiden  friend,  love  is  not  a  passion,  but  a 
growth.  The  heart  is  a  lamp,  with  just  oil  enough  to  burn 
for  an  hour ;  if  there  be  no  oil  to  put  in  agam  it  will  go  out. 
God's  grace  is  the  oil  that  fills  the  lamp  of  love.  If  there 
be  one  thing  above  all  others  that  every  woman  should  say 
to  herself  in  the  beginning  of  her  married  life,  it  is  this :  "  I 
can  not  be  respected  and  loved,  as  I  must  needs  be  to  be  hap- 
py, unless  I  can  bring  something  more  than  myself.  It  must 
be  God  in  me  that  shall  maintam  me  in  that  dignity  and  full- 
ness of  influence  and  impressiveness  that  shall  win  and  keep 
my  husband's  love."  A  godless  woman  entering  into  the  mar- 
riage relation  goes  as  a  lamb  to  the  slaughter;  wreaths  of 
flowers  may  be  around  her  neck,  but  the  knife  is  not  far  off. 
Desecration  of  love  is  the  saddest  thing  on  earth.     There  is 


454  Jacob's  Ladder. 

nothing,  it  seems  to  me,  that  touches  the  contemplative  heart 
more  than  that ;  to  see  what  love  might  be,  if  its  early  days 
be  projihets  of  possibility,  and  then  to  see  what  it  is.  More 
than  for  any  thing  else  in  the  world,  love  fails  for  want  of 
food,  and  no  other  food  for  love  is  there  but  goodness.  Love 
can  no  more  burn  without  goodness  than  the  flame  can  with- 
out fuel.  The  sorrows  that  must  go  with  you  through  all 
your  life,  or  break  constantly  upon  you  somewhere,  can  not 
be  borne  without  God's  ministering  angels.  As  your  house- 
hold grows  around  you,  and  your  children  begin  to  feel  the 
tides  of  life,  and  you  become  in  turn  their  guides,  as  your 
parents  were  yours,  you  will  find  that  no  one  can  bear  life 
well  who  has  not  got  somewhere  the  "  j)resent  help  in  time 
of  trouble."  If  there  be  any  thing  that  young  wedded  love 
should  have  as  its  first  vision,  it  should  be  a  vision  of  a  lad- 
der between  the  earth  and  heaven,  and  the  angels  of  God 
ascending  and  descending,  and  God  over  all,  blessing  it. 
Then  there  is  hope.  Begin  your  household  life,  begin  your 
wedded  life  with  a  firm  hold  ujDon  God,  and  purity,  and  heav- 
en, and  there  is  hope  for  you ;  otherwise,  sad  is  your  fate. 

n.  Young  men,  let  me  say  a  word  to  you.  Li  the  begin- 
ning of  your  plans  in  life  there  are  two  ways  opening  before 
every  one  of  you :  one  lies  literally  along  the  surface  of  the 
earth,  the  other  leads  from  earth  toward  heaven.  Either  of 
them  may  include  a  certain  degree  of  worldly  prosperity. 
The  one  makes  a  man's  whole  experience  worldly ;  the  other 
gives  him  possession  of  worldly  joys,  but  makes  these  the 
germs  of  higher  and  nobler  ones.  There  are  here  in  these 
great  cities,  or  have  gone  from  here,  tens  of  thousands  of 
young  men  who  have  literally  followed  the  patriarch's  ex- 
ample ;  they  have  left  their  father's  house.  Some  are  exiled 
on  a  foreign  shore ;  some  are  on  the  sea,  or  are  to  be ;  some 
are  in  remote  states ;  some  have  come  from  the  rural  districts 
to  the  city,  from  old  occupations  to  new  and  untried  ones. 
Now  what  a  glorious  beginning  of  life  is  that  by  which  a 
young  man  consecrates  himself,  in  the  very  first  step,  and 


Jacob's  Ladder.  455 

distinctly  purposes  with  himself,  and  promises  to  his  God 
that  he  will  unite  earthly  pursuits  and  ambitions  with  heav- 
enly ambitions  and  pursuits :  "  I  will  never  dissever  my  con- 
nection with  heaven.  My  ladder  shall  stand  on  the  ground, 
but  its  toj)  shall  never  come  down  from  the  heavenly  rest." 
This  is  not  your  planning.  You  were  wise  if  it  were ;  but  it 
is  not  your  planning.  Oh,  the  wantonness  and  the  shame 
of  those  who  early  essay  to  dispossess  life  of  its  moral 
restraints  and  influences ;  for  there  be  many  of  those  who 
make  use  of  their  first  liberty  and  escape  from  home  to  dis- 
own parental  instructions ;  they  are  not  to  be  tied  to  father 
and  mother  by  leading-strings  any  longer;  they  mean  to 
have  liberty,  supposing  that  liberty  and  license  are  one  and 
the  same  thing ;  they  mean  to  understand  more  of  life,  as  if 
knowledge  of  life  were  to  be  found  by  groveling  in  the  lower 
experiences  of  animal  nature,  in  appetite  and  self-indulgence. 
There  be  many  who  suppose  that  knowledge  is  increased  by 
knowing  more  of  morbid  things.  Blessed  are  they  whose 
visions,  as  they  leave  the  watch-care  and  instructions  of  fa- 
ther and  mother,  are  of  angels  ascending  and  descending ; 
who  accej)t  the  vision,  and  in  their  strivings  for  prosperity 
and  wisdom  vow  as  Jacob  did : 

"  If  God  will  be  with  me,  and  will  keep  me  in  this  way  that 
t  go,  and  will  give  me  bread  to  eat,  and  raiment  to  put  on,  so 
that  I  come  again  to  my  father's  house  in  peace,  then  shall 
the  Lord  be  my  God." 

There  are  some  here  to-day  who  have  never  become  thus 
depraved;  but  there  are  some  whom  I  have  exactly  de- 
scribed ;  and  it  seems  to  them,  perhaps,  while  I  am  speak- 
ing, to  be  a  little  strange  that  when  they  first  came  down 
to  New  York  to  enter  upon  business,  the  first  sermon  they 
heard  should  be  one  in  which  the  minister  recalled  to  their 
mind  their  separation  from  home,  and  their  prospects  in 
business,  and  urged  them  to  start  in  life  by  a  consecration  of 
their  business  energy  and  of  their  worldly  wisdom  to  the 
service  of  God,  and  they  almost  feel  that  there  is  a  supersti- 


456  Jacob's  Ladder. 

tion  in  it.  There  is  something  better  than  superstition  in  it ; 
there  is  a  divine  Providence  in  it.  Let  me  hope  that  there  is 
an  effectual  divine  influence  in  it  that  shall  induce  you  to  he- 
gin  aright,  and  persevere  in  the  right. 

Do  not  reserve  goodness  to  follow  after  prosperity.  Some 
men  mean  to  have  an  Indian  summer  of  piety  by-and-by,  but 
the  spring  and  the  real  summer  they  mean  to  devote  to  wick- 
edness— not  to  unprofitable,  but  Xo profitable  wickedness.  Li- 
dian  summer  shimmers  in  the  air  for  two  weeks;  nothing 
grows  in  it ;  it  makes  things  seem  beautiful ;  it  is  a  pretty 
sentiment,  but  it  has  no  other  use.  An  old  man's  piety  is  a 
very  good  garment  to  die  in;  let  us  hope  that  the  wearer 
escapes  out  of  life  with  some  sort  of  safety.  But  suppose 
that  a  man,  in  the  day  of  battle,  when  his  country's  fate 
hung  in  the  scale,  should  play  the  coward  all  day  long,  iin- 
til  the  last  moment,  what  would  you  call  such  a  man  as  that  ? 
Yet  here  is  God's  great  army,  fighting,  in  desperate  need  of 
every  recruit,  and  every  man  is  called  to  be  a  soldier  in  it; 
and  yet  men  enter  life  proposing  to  themselves  deliberately, 
"  All  this  battle  through  I  will  be  on  the  wrong  side.  God, 
be  thou  forgotten,  and  be  gracious  while  I  forget  you.  An- 
gels, do  not  binder  me ;  help  me  if  you  can ;  but  I  mean  to 
have  no  restraint  from  you.  When  I  have  got  through,  and 
have  won  my  honors,  and  enjoyed  my  pleasures,  and  amass- 
ed my  property,  and  have  nothing  else  to  do,  I  will  give  the 
ends  of  the  fagots,  that  are  nearly  burned  out,  to  light  my- 
self up  with  a  final  piety  which  shall  answer  as  a  sort  of  mean 
insurance  at  the  close  of  life."  Is  that  honor?  Can  any  man, 
after  making  such  a  deliberate  bargain,  look  upon  himself 
with  complacency  ?  Yet  stop  !  There  are  not  a  few  of  you 
that  now  shrink  from  this  view,  and  feel  that  it  is  dishonor- 
able, because  you  have  never  pictured  it  to  yourself  in  this 
way,  yet  are  doing  this  very  thing.  I  therefore  but  interpret 
the  meaning  of  your  conduct  to  you  ;  and  I  beseech  of  you, 
do  not  so  vilely  use  this  life,  that  was  given  you  as  a  price 
put  into  your  hands  wherewith  to  purchase  eternal  wisdom. 


Jacob's  Ladder.  457 

HL  Let  us  all  look  back.  You  that  are  now  young  no  lon- 
ger, what  has  been  the  success  of  those  plans  that  were  to 
have  been  altogether  good  when  you  entered  life  ?  You  enter- 
ed life  not  meaning  to  do  any  thing  bad.  Peradventure  you 
intended  to  do  much  that  was  good.  Look  back  and  see  what 
has  been  the  fulfillment  of  all  your  promises.  How  does  the 
life  that  you  have  actually  lived  compare  with  that  ideal  life 
that  you  proposed  to  live  ?  Have  you  no  testimony  to  give  ? 
If  God  should  call  you  back  again  to  start  in  life,  would  you 
live  your  life  over  again  just  as  you  have  ?  Were  there  no 
fundamental  mistakes  ?  Are  there  no  passions  whose  mas- 
tery you  would  disallow,  and  whose  blight  you  have  felt? 
Is  there  no  experience  that  would  corroborate  the  testimony 
of  God's  word,  that  righteousness  is  prosperity ;  and  that  the 
higher  the  scale  of  motives  which  man  brings  to  bear  upon 
business,  the  better  is  it  even  for  business,  even  setting  aside 
its  moral  influence  upon  character  ?  Is  a  man  to  go  through 
life  working  out  these  great  moral  problems,  and  thus  come 
to  results  which  are  of  vital  importance  to  the  young,  then  to 
be  dumb,  and  never  bear  witness  ?  Would  Isaiah  have  done 
right,  when  God's  Spirit  inspired  him  with  great  truths,  if  he 
had  refused  to  utter  them?  Does  not  God  all  your  life  in- 
spire you  with  truths  of  which  you  are  bound  to  be  a  wit- 
ness ?  Men  sometimes  declare,  "  I  am  a  Christian,  but  I  have 
nothing  to  say,"  and  yet  the  most  momentous  problems  of 
moral  being  have  been  wrought  out  in  your  history.  You 
have  lived  a  life  that  is  more  wonderful  than  was  the  origi- 
nal circumnavigation  of  the  globe.  Captain  Cook's  voyages 
are  mere  child's  play  compared  with  the  voyage  that  every 
grown  man  in  this  audience  has  made.  The  experiences 
which  you  have  known,  interpreted  in  the  light  of  God's 
truth,  are  of  momentous  importance.  Yet  you  are  all  dumb  ! 
Old  men  are  walking  out  of  life,  and  leaving  young  men  be- 
hind them,  without  testimony  or  warning,  but  bearing  wit- 
ness, rather,  by  their  silence,  that  the  best  way  to  live  is  to 
enter  life  as  a  sordid  worldling,  and  continue,  through  all  the 


458  Jacob's  Ladder. 

ripest  years  of  life,  a  mere  secular  agent,  and  at  last  put  a  lit- 
tle varnish,  and  hustle  about  them  a  few  virtues,  without 
ever  uttering  a  word  of  testimony  for  Jesus.  Where  are  those 
angels  you  used  to  see  ?  Did  you  ever  examine  your  angels  ? 
Don't  you  remember  how  you  used  to  sit  in  the  kitchen  door, 
or  around  the  stove,  and  look  out  at  the  sun  setting,  or  hear 
the  crickets  chirp,  or  the  clock  tick,  until  by  those  natural 
influences  your  senses  were  charmed,  and  your  imagination 
took  wing?  Did  you  never  sit  and  sing  "Roslyn  Castle" 
until  you  cried,  or  "Home,  sweet  Home"  until  your  heart 
melted  ?  Did  you  never,  in  those  hours,  think  of  what  you 
would  be  or  do  ?  Did  you  never  build  your  house,  or  lead 
in  your  companion  ?  Oh,  what  angels  you  saw  in  those  early 
days !  What  are  the  angels  now  ?  Look  along  your  ledger 
of  life — along  your  life  plans.  Is  it  devoutness  ?  is  it  con- 
science, pure  and  sensitive  ?  is  it  faith  ?  is  it  holy  hope  ?  is  it 
true  generosity  and  disinterested  love  that  you  see  ascending 
and  descending,  to  the  exclusion  of  all  other  inspirations, 
along  the  ways  of  your  life  ?  Is  it  not,  rather,  haggard 
pride  ?  is  it  not  smirking  vanity  ?  is  it  not  dripping  lust  ? 
Are  they  not  angels  of  Moloch,  and  Baal,  and  Mammon? 
Are  not  those  angels  ministrant  which  you  knew  in  your 
childhood  all  gone  ?  and  when  you  look  upon  your  life,  are 
there  not  in  their  places  these  passions  that  are  playing  up 
and  down  the  ways  of  life  ?    Are  not  these  your  angels  ? 

Where  is  your  God  ?  Have  you  not  lived  afar  from  him 
ever  since  you  were  young  ?  Once,  access  to  him  was  easy ; 
is  it  now  ?  Once,  the  heart  was  open  to  divine  influences ;  is 
it  now  ?  Is  there  not  the  breadth  of  your  life  between  you 
and  your  God?  While  others  have  been  drawing  nearer, 
hour  by  hour,  to  the  celestial  city,  your  life  has  been  hourly 
taking  you  farther  and  farther  away.  Are  there  not  things 
that  you  have  been  doing — I  do  not  mean  that  you  have  been 
betrayed  into  by  momentary  passion — but  are  there  not  de- 
liberate acts  of  yours  in  the  doing  of  which  you  have  had  to 
cringe,  and  which,  once  being  done,  you  have  sought  to  cover 


Jacob's  Ladder.  459 

over  and  to  deceive  even  your  secret  selves  ?  Are  there  not 
jjortions  of  your  life  that  have  been  so  bad  that  you  have  had 
to  bribe  your  conscience  to  silence  ?  Are  you  not  living  in 
such  a  "way  that  if  you  were  to  be  lifted  into  the  presence 
of  God  and  his  angels,  you  would  be  filled  with  shame  and 
contempt  ? 

You  have  been  living  a  life  that  reaches  up  like  a  Tower 
of  Babel  between  you  and  your  God !  Because  your  life  has 
been  so  bad  thus  far,  will  you  go  on  to  the  end  doing  worse 
and  worse  ?  It  is  in  the  j)Ower  of  one  good  angel  to  drive  a 
hundred  bad  ones  away.  The  sword  of  the  Lord  is  greater 
than  all  the  army  of  hell.  If  you  have  lived  an  evil  life — if 
you  have  gone  wrong  hitherto,  it  is  not  too  late  to  turn. 
Though  it  is  a  base  thing  for  a  young  man  to  purpose  to  use 
his  life  against  God,  and  then,  in  the  end,  have  piety  enough 
to  save  him ;  although  that  is  dishonorable,  yet,  when  a  man 
has  squandered  his  earlier  life,  base  as  it  is,  and  wicked  as  it 
is,  it  is  even  baser  and  more  wicked  to  continue  wicked  to 
the  very  end.  It  is  better  to  be  saved  at  the  eleventh  hour 
than  not  to  be  saved  at  all.  You  can  not  afford  to  be  lost. 
You  can  not  afford  to  lose  reason,  nor  conscience,  nor  pure 
affection,  nor  God,  the  Great  Lover ! 

"  What  shall  it  profit  a  man  if  he  gain  the  whole  world 
and  lose  his  own  soul  ?" 

A  noble  life,  begun  early  and  completed  wisely,  looks  to 
me  like  a  fair  building  which  taste  erects.  The  left  hand  is 
taste,  and  the  right  hand  wealth.  Although,  when  the  house 
is  being  built,  men  do  not  see  exactly  what  is  meant,  behold- 
ing dirt  thrown  out,  the  materials  scattered  around,  and  the 
workmen's  chips  and  shavings,  the  mortar  and  the  lime  sur- 
rounding and  the  scaffold  hiding  it,  yet,  when  the  building 
is  completed,  the  scaffolding  taken  down,  the  soil  and  dirt  re- 
moved, and  the  household  are  moved  in,  and  the  lights  bum 
in  the  windows,  and  there  is  music  in  every  room,  and  love 
•  consecrates  every  hall  and  passage,  how  beautiful  then  is  that 
accomplished  building  !    Such  is  the  life  of  a  good  man.    A 


460  Jacob's  Ladder. 

bad  man,  wliose  life  is  a  failure  in  all  its  moral  purposes — 
what  is  that  ?  It  is  like  the  burned  districts  in  Charleston — 
which  was  the  saddest  sight  I  ever  saw  in  my  life.  I  walked 
up  and  down  its  streets,  and  took  a  lesson  which,  if  I  were 
to  live  a  thousand  years,  would  never  die  out  of  me.  It 
was  a  city  of  my  own  land.  I  loved  it  as  I  love  my  own. 
The  fire  had  devoured  it.  There  stood  the  stacks  of  chim- 
neys, gaunt  against  the  avenging  sky;  and  there  stood  the 
tottering  walls ;  and  there  huge  heaps  of  noisome  materials, 
where  reptiles  resorted;  weeds  grew  rankly,  and  the  dried 
stalks  of  last  year's  weeds  grimly  stood  thick  all  around. 
Street  after  street  was  marked  with  emptiness  and  desola- 
tion. Such  seems  to  me  to  be  the  life  of  many  a  man,  aH 
the  ways  of  whose  life  are  cumbered  with  the  wrecks  of  the 
past,  and  all  of  whose  plans  at  last  shall  perish  as  with  an 
eternal  fire  and  desolation.  Oh,  to  live  so,  and  to  die  so, 
and  then  to  take  the  fate  of  the  other  life  as  best  you  may — 
how  piteous ! 

You  that  are  starting,  avoid  the  errors  of  those  that  have 
gone  too  fast  and  too  far. 

You  that  are  old,  bear  witness  for  yourselves,  and  seek 
to  repaii',  as  far  as  you  can,  the  errors  of  your  own  lives  by 
warning  and  directing  the  young. 

Young  men,  lift  up  your  life-plans  to  the  heavens. 

Maidens,  look  to  the  God  of  your  fathers. 

If  there  be  any  one  in  this  world  who,  more  than  another, 
can  not  afibrd  not  to  be  a  Christian,  it  is  a  woman.  If  there 
be  any  one  whose  beauty  fades  as  a  flower  and  whose  grace 
needs  the  sustenance  of  the  ineffable ;  if  there  be  any  one 
whose  power  is  in  beauty,  in  purity,  in  goodness,  it  is  a 
woman.  If  there  be  any  one  more  than  another  upon  whom 
blight  falls  more  rudely ;  if  there  be  any  one  more  than  an- 
other who  is  more  burdened  with  grief  or  more  wrung  with 
sorrow,  it  is  a  woman.  I  marvel  to  see  a  woman  that  is 
not  a  Christian.  The  ladder  between  your  souls  and  God. 
is  not  half  so  long  as  that  between  our  souls  and  God.     God 


Jacob's  Ladder.  461 

made  woman  to  be  better  than  man,  and  the  perversion  is  La 
proportion  when  she  is  worse. 

I  beseech  every  young  man  and  every  maiden  that  is  be- 
ginning life  to  begin  it  aright.  Is'oio  is  the  time.  Days  are 
passing.  Years  are  accumulating.  It  will  be  too  late  by- 
and-by.     Begin  7iow. 


XXII. 

€^t  Itote  nf  Cliristioniiij  €z^h^. 


Preached  in  Plymouth  Church,  Brooklyn,  in  the  Winter  of 
1867-8. 


The  State  of  CnRisTiANiTx  To-day. 


"  For  what  the  kw  could  not  do,  in  that  it  was  weak  through  the  flesh,  God, 
sending  his  own  Son  in  the  likeness  of  sinful  flesh,  and  for  sin,  con- 
demned sin  in  the  flesh. " — Rohans,  viii. ,  3. 

This  is  a  distinct  statement  that  the  religions  system  of 
the  Jews  had  come  to  the  end  of  its  influence.  What  the 
law  could  not  do,  in  that  it  was  weak  through  the  flesh,  Christ 
had  come  to  do.  The  Jewish  system  of  religion  had  carried 
mankind  as  far  as  it  could.  It  had  educated  them  to  a  jioint 
where,  while  they  had  need  of  more,  it  had  nothing  more  to 
give.  It  is  called  elsewhere  a  schoolmaster  to  bring  men  to 
Christ.  As  a  teacher  in  a  primary  school  educates  a  child  up 
to  a  certain  extent,  and  Avhile  the  child  must  go  on,  the  teach- 
er can  do  no  more,  but  passes  him  to  another  school  or  an- 
other teacher,  so  the  law  was  the  schoolmaster  in  the  prima- 
ry school,  and  sent  forward  its  pupils  in  the  fullness  of  time 
into  a  higher  school,  where  Christ  was  to  give  them  farther 
instruction  and  develoj^ment. 

It  is  becoming  common  in  many  quarters  in  our  day  to 
hear  men  speak  of  the  Christian  religion  in  the  manner  in 
which  Paul  spoke  of  the  Jewish.  It  is  patronizingly  said.  It 
has  done  a  good  work ;  it  has  introduced  certain  important 
elements  into  human  society;  but  men  are  so  far  educated 
by  it  now  that  it  is  no  longer  able  to  meet  the  want  of  our 
times ;  but  from  some  source,  from  the  human  soul,  or  a  di- 
vine revelation  of  a  new  sort,  we  are  to  expect  something 
like  a  latter-day  glory,  which  mil  be  to  Christianity  what 
Christianity  was  to  Judaism. 

It  is  a  part  of  this  habit  to  represent  churches,  and  minis- 

n.-GG 


4:66         The  State  of  Christianity  To-day. 

ters,  and  religious  life  in  our  own  time  as  decaying  and  dy- 
ing: out.  One  would  think,  to  hear  the  utterances  of  some 
men — and  some  men,  too,  that  stand  in  pulpits — that  we  were 
in  Jerusalem  two  thousand  years  ago. 

Now  is  there  any  evidence  that  the  Christian  faith  is  be- 
ginning to  wane  ?  Has  the  function  of  the  Christian  Church 
come  nearly  to  its  end  ?    This  is  a  practical  question. 

I.  In  the  first  place,  where  are  those  men  who  give  evi- 
dences of  having  exhausted  all  the  nutrition  which  there  is 
in  Christianity ;  all  that  in  Christianity  which  inspires  and 
develops  aspiration  toward  God  ?  "Where  are  those  men  that 
have  reproduced  in  themselves  all  the  goodness  that  there 
was  in  Jesus  Christ  ?  Where  are  those  men  that  have  ex- 
hausted those  influences  in  the  New  Testament  which  prompt 
self-denial  and  self-sacrifice  ?  Where  are  those  men  that  have 
so  grown  in  equity  and  purity  that  there  is  nothing  more  to 
be  learned  by  them  ?  Where  are  those  men  that  have  round- 
ed out  the  orb  of  their  benevolence,  and  brightened  it  to  such 
an  extent  that  they  are  now  like  some  full-grown  moon,  look- 
ing around  for  another  sun  to  shine  upon  them  ?  I  have  nev- 
er seen  these  men ;  certainly  not  among  those  who  are  most 
ready  to  speak  of  Christianity  getting  into  its  dotage. 

I  have  found  men  who  had  just  enough  originality  to  un- 
settle their  own  minds, to  raise  questions  upon  themes  infinite 
and  in  their  very  nature  transcending  investigation ;  and  who 
can  not,  upon  such  themes,  raise  questions  that  unsettle  his 
own  mind  ?  I  have  seen  good  men,  but  none  entirely  good ; 
men  pure  enough  and  benevolent  enough,  as  the  world  meas- 
ures ;  but  I  never  have  seen  or  heard  of  a  man  who  had  ex- 
hausted the  whole  Gospel,  and  needed  more. 

II.  It  is  said  that  at  any  rate  churchism  is  wearing  out ; 
that  men  no  longer  frequent  the  house  of  God.  That  never 
has  been  an  easily  besetting  sin.  I  think  they  do  fully  as  much 
as  ever  they  did.  But,  even  if  it  were  true  that  churches  are 
wearing  out,  churches  are  one  thing,  and  religion  is  another. 
The  church  is  no  more  religion  than  the  masonry  of  the  aque- 


The  State  of  Christianity  To-day.         467 

duct  is  the  watei-  that  flows  in  it.  Schools  are  a  very  differ- 
ent thing  from  intelligence,  though  intelligence  uses  them  as 
instruments ;  so  churches  are  merely  instruments  of  religion. 
They  may  vary,  though  the  truth  remains  the  same.  For 
churches  are  not  divine.     Religion  is,  but  churches  are  not. 

I  know  there  are  other  claims,  sometimes  modest  and  some- 
times arrogant,  upon  this  subject.  But  there  is  no  more  ex- 
act pattern  for  churches  in  the  New  Testament  than  there  is 
for  common  schools  or  for  civil  government.  There  are  un- 
questionably intimations  of  church  oi'ganization,  but  nowhere 
has  there  been  authoritatively  laid  down  the  foundation  or 
given  the  outlines  for  church  government  or  church  worship. 
Churches,  therefore,  may  change  through,  all  gradations  and 
degrees  without  changing  in  one  single  iota  the  substance  of 
religion. 

A  man  may  begin  with  his  household — his  wife  and  chil- 
dren— in  a  cottage.  With  growing  abundance,  he  may  add 
room  to  room,  hall  to  hall,  until  it  becomes  largely  increased. 
The  household  is  the  same — the  house  changes.  As  still  his 
wants  or  ambition  increase,  he  may  pull  down  all  this,  and  lay 
a  new  foundation,  and  carry  up  another  structure.  The 
hovise  is  different,  but  the  household  is  the  same.  So  you 
may  change  the  form  of  the  Chui'ch  and  the  methods  of  its 
worship  without  affecting  religion ;  for  these  are  but  the  ex- 
terior instruments  of  religion. 

But  besides  this,  the  spirit  of  man,  in  religion,  intermits. 
There  has  never  been  a  steady  growth  in  any  thing,  neither 
in  the  discoveries  of  science,  nor  in  the  progress  of  govern- 
ment, nor  in  religious  life.  Always  growth  comes  by  inter- 
missions, and  it  would  not  be  strange  if  it  should  be  so  in 
the  Church.  If,  then,  there  is  now  a  decadence  of  interest  in 
religion,  it  might  show  simply  that  we  are  in  one  of  these 
stages  of  temporary  inactivity.  But  I  do  not  believe  the  fact 
to  be  as  it  is  stated. 

It  may  be  true  that  churches  in  New  York  are  not  as  fer- 
tile as  they  once  Avere.     It  may  be  that  in  certain  sections 


468         The  State  of  Christianity  To-day. 

Churcli  life  is  comj^aratively  receding.  But,  looking  at  our 
land  comparatively,  I  affirm  unhesitatingly  that  the  Church 
was  never  more  vital,  never  more  active,  never  j^roved  its  or- 
igin, its  use,  its  influence  more  than  to-day.  It  was  never 
more  earnest.  Never  were  there  signs  of  a  more  glorious 
future  to  it  than  to-day.  All  these  croakings  of  men,  and  all 
these  predictions  that  religion  has  done  its  work,  and  that 
Ave  are  to  look  for  a  new  revelation,  are  based  upon  insuffi- 
cient facts  and  inconclusive  reasonings. 

III.  It  may  he  said  that  the  thinking  men,  the  first  men  of 
our  time,  particularly  in  the  direction  of  science,  are  less  and 
less  believers  m  revelation.  It  may  be  said  that  the  control- 
Img  minds  in  science  to-day  are  men  of  natural  religion,  if 
any  at  all,  and  not  men  of  revealed  religion.  And  the  state- 
ment has  some  truth  in  it.  The  young  minds  in  Germany 
and  France,  certainly  the  youthful  scholars  of  science  in  En- 
gland, and,  to  a  certain  extent,  in  our  own  country,  seem  to 
be  pointing  away  from  revelation.  But  just  now  we  are  to 
remember  the  whole  Avorld  is  intensely  occupied  with  mate- 
rial interests.     Science  predominates. 

Sometimes,  in  the  history  of  the  human  intellect,  one  ele- 
ment in  society  takes  precedence  of  every  other,  and  absorbs 
every  thing,  cheating  the  other  elements.  In  some  ages  it  is 
the  religious  element  which  has  the  first  place ;  in  others  it 
is  cold,  hard  thought ;  then  this  has  given  way  to  periods  of 
enthusiastic  and  even  superstitious  devotion.  Just  now  we 
are  in  a  period  in  which  the  human  mind  is  working  in  a 
most  unbalanced  degree  toward  mere  material  investiga- 
tions. But  we  shall  certainly  come  to  another  period  ere 
long.  If  now  the  spiritual  elements  are  cheated,  as  they  cer- 
tainly are ;  if  naturalists  are  in  the  ascendency  over  the  spir- 
itualist school,  the  time  will  not  be  long  delayed  when  these 
things  will  begin  to  balance  themselves,  and  the  speculations 
which  are  now  so  purely  material  will  begin  to  be  supple- 
mented anew  with  spiritual  speculations.  The  world  never 
can  be  understood  from  what  is  taking  place  at  any  particu- 


The  State  of  Christianity  To-day.         469 

lar  period  of  time.  "We  happen  just  now  to  be  in  the  cycle 
of  scientific  skepticism.  The  world  has  seen  just  such  cycles 
before,  and  outlives  them,  and  it  will  outlive  them  again. 

But  periods  of  transition  and  advance  are  apt  to  unsettle 
men.  It  is  not  a  sign  that  religion  is  decaying  because  there 
is  a  certain  unsettling  of  religious  questions ;  because  there 
are  a  great  many  questions  that  may  be  unsettled  properly. 
There  has  to  be  in  every  age  a  restatement  of  religious  truth. 
TJiere  is  no  one  exact  mathematical  mode  of  stating  religious 
truth.  It  is  relative  to  men ;  relative  to  institutions,  times, 
manners,  customs ;  and  whenever  any  nation  moves  forward 
in  these  respects,  it  is  indispensable  to  restate  the  great  pri- 
mary problems  of  religion.  This  implies  a  certain  remission 
of  forms,  a  certain  transition.  Transition  periods  are  almost 
always  periods  of  doubt  and  uncertainty.  But  the  undying 
necessities  of  the  human  soul  force  men  asrain  to  reliojious 
truth,  no  matter  how  much  they  may  have  doubted  or  been 
unsettled.  So  soon  as  that  growth  which  seems  to  unsettle 
the  old  faith  has  adjusted  itself,  the  religious  wants  of  the 
soul  reassert  themselves,  and  ere  long  the  old  statements  are 
overlaid  with  new  religious  developments,  and  with  religious 
truth  in  new  forms. 

In  many  of  our  river  valleys,  freshets  frequently  cover  the 
old  soil  many,  many  inches  deep,  and  all  its  grasses  and  flow- 
ers are  hid  by  the  mud  and  buried  there.  But  after  a  time 
seeds  and  roots  begin  to  germinate,  and  soon  a  richer  vegeta- 
tion than  ever  works  in  on  that  very  same  soil,  so  that  the 
river  bottom  is  never  abandoned  and  never  becomes  a  desert. 
The  old  growths  may  cease  by  the  superimposition  of  a  new 
soil,  but  the  new  soil  itself  must  be  covered  with  a  new 
growth. 

As  it  is  in  nature,  so  it  is  in  the  human  soul.*  I  expect  in- 
creasing knowledge ;  and  by  increasing  knowledge  I  expect 
that  there  will  be  better  methods.  With  increasing  mind, 
there  ought  to  be  more  skill  in  preaching.  There  ought  to 
be  better  discernment  of  the  nature  of  the  human  mind,  and 


470         The  State  of  Christianity  To-day. 

therefore  better  methods  of  society.  There  ought  to  be  great 
improvements  in  education.  But  all  these  changes  may  take 
place  without  in  the  slightest  degree  affecting  the  more  fun- 
damental elements  of  revealed  religion  in  nature,  the  necessi- 
ty of  the  human  soul  for  the  doctrine  of  immortality,  and  that 
blessed  doctrine  of  redemption  through  Jesus  Christ,  which 
is  the  highway  to  immortality. 

IV.  Hitherto  we  have  merely  considered  the  statements 
that  are  made.  Let  us  now,  on  the  other  hand,  inquire  jiosi- 
tively  as  to  the  condition  of  religious  influences. 

1.  Is  there  a  decadence  of  faith  among  Christians  and  in 
the  community  ?  Is  the  spirit  of  the  age,  in  the  Church  or 
out  of  it,  one  of  indifference  ?  Very  far  from  it.  On  the  con- 
trary, probably  never  in  the  world's  history  was  there  an  age 
in  which  there  was  so  deep  and  serious  a  religious  faith  as 
there  is  now — a  tendency  to  belief,  a  desire  to  believe,  a  hun- 
ger of  believing. 

What  men  call  a  want  of  faith  is  oftentimes  the  very  op- 
posite. It  is  the  unwillingness  of  men  to  accept  so  little  as 
hitherto  has  been  included  in  the  articles  of  faith.  It  is  the 
reaching  out  of  the  soul  in  new  aspirations,  new  longings.  It 
is  asking  for  more,  not  for  less.  By  a  mistake  of  terms,  men 
frequently  call  this  an  unsettling.  It  is  growing — the  grow- 
ing of  fundamental  instinct  and  of  true  piety.  This  deeper 
hunger  for  change,  if  at  all,  is  because  the  past  is  too  narrow, 
and  the  future  broader  and  broader. 

That  there  are  some  schools  out  of  which  faith  is  cast ; 
that  there  are  cold,  unbclievuig,  indifferent,  scofling  natures, 
I  will  not  deny.  But  the  very  skepticism  of  our  age  is  not 
marked  by  these  things.  They  are  exceptional.  There  is 
no  such  bitterness  in  unbelief;  there  is  no  such  hatred  and 
malignity  in 'skepticism  as  there  used  to  be.  Indeed,  the 
great  schools  of  skepticism  in  our  day  are  sombre,  sad,  wea- 
risome ;  and  if  they  do  disbelieve,  they  do  not  want  to. 

2.  Is  the  devotional  spirit  decayed  in  our  day?  In  certain 
directions  it  may  be.     There  may  be  found  barren  spots.     I 


The  State  of  Christianity  To-day.         JrTl 

will  admit,  too,  that  the  devotional  spirit  in  our  day  is  chan- 
ging. It  ought  to  change.  Fear  and  awe  are  the  first  forms 
in  which  the  devotional  spirit  exercises  itself.  They  belong- 
to  the  childhood  of  religion.  Now,  as  progress  in  intelli- 
gence raises  men  into  a  better  conception  of  God,  as  the  new 
spirit  reveals  man's  place  in  creation  more  clearly  than  it  was 
known  in  the  beginning  of  time,  there  will  be  a  new  mode  of 
reverence,  a  new  method  of  devotion.  Men  trained  to  liber- 
ty, to  citizenship,  to  an  intelligent  understanding  of  their 
own  rights,  to  the  fatherhood  of  God,  can  never  be  expected 
to  worship  in  the  same  spirit  that  they  would  if  they  had 
been  trained  in  despotism,  without  any  knowledge  of  human 
rights  or  man's  place  in  creation,  and  with  only  the  idea  that 
God  is  a  monarch,  absolute  as  earthly  monarchs  are.  But 
with  a  better  knowledge,  man's  whole  conception  of  society, 
his  whole  idea  of  man's  place  in  creation,  is  changed ;  and 
with  that  change,  hajjly,  is  also  changed  the  spirit  of  his  de- 
votion. For  the  element  of  love  has  greatly  increased ;  so 
that  now,  while  there  seems  to  be  lost  out  of  modern  experi- 
ence much  of  that  which  made  the  old  devotion  grand  and 
even  gloomy,  I  think  there  is  far  more  of  the  experience  of 
the  household,  far  more  of  the  filial  spirit,  far  more  of  the 
richness  of  love,  far  more  that  will  endure  and  that  will  fruc- 
tify through  the  ages.  The  devotional  spirit,  though  far  less 
ascetic  than  it  was,  is  more  prevalent ;  and  there  is  also  its 
reflection  in  the  community,  more  emphatic,  namely,  respect 
for  religion. 

.  3.  The  propagating  spirit  of  any  faith  is  an  indication  of 
its  vitality.  What  is  the  condition  in  this  regard  of  the 
Christian  religion  ?  ^  The  ornamental  and  architectural  pe- 
riod of  a  faith  is  the  period  in  which  the  ethical  has  run  into 
the  aesthetic.  It  is  stationary  usually,  and  not  far  from  the 
period  of  decay.  But  the  propagating  spirit  is  very  differ- 
ent. N"ow  never,  certainly  in  the  history  of  this  nation,  was 
there  so  much  as  to-day  a  spirit  of  propagating  the  Christian 
faith.    Never  were  so  much  pains  taken  to  rear  men  for 


472         The  State  of  Christianity  To-day. 

teaching  it.  Never  was  there  so  large  a  demand,  and  so 
large  a  supply  of  its  instruments,  in  the  form  of  religious 
books  and  papers;  and,  above  all,  never  was  there  such  a 
spirit  of  buildmg  churches  and  supplying  them  in  waste  and 
destitute  places.  Millions  upon  millions  of  money,  thousands 
upon  thousands  of  men  and  women,  every  year,  steadfastly 
follow  the  swift  -  flowing  tide  of  emigration  into  the  new 
states  and  all  the  waste  places  throughout  this  broad  land. 
Churches  and  school-houses  come  almost  as  soon  as  the  set- 
tler's cottage  is  erected.  Thousands  of  churches  every  year 
lift  up  their  witnessing  spires  toward  heaven ;  to-day  a  prai- 
rie, to-morrow  a  village,  the  next  day  the  school  and  the 
church;  and  this  not  once  or  twice,  but  every  where;  so 
that  the  bread  that  supplies  the  body  is  scarcely  accounted 
more  the  staff  of  life  than  is  that  other  loaf  that  supplies  the 
soul.  They  go  hand  in  hand  every  where.  Does  this  look 
as  though  Christianity  were  losing  its  vitality  ?  as  though  its 
force  were  spent? 

.  4.  Look  at  it  in  another  point  of  view.  "What  is  the  testi- 
mony of  your  observation  in  respect  to  the  religious  spirit  as 
it  exhibits  itself  in  the  household  ?  because  this  is  one  of  the 
most  important  elements  in  the  judgment.  Is  the  family  to- 
day less  or  more  under  the  influence  of  a  true  spiritual  Chris- 
tianity than  it  formerly  was  ?  Is  there  as  much  animalism, 
as  much  passion,  as  much  grossness  in  the  household  as  in 
former  times  ?  There  never  was  a  period  in  the  history  of 
the  world  when  there  were  so  many  high-toned  and  pure 
Christian  families  as  to-day.  There  never  was  a  period  in 
the  history  of  man  w^hen  there  were  so  many  altars,  and  so 
many  intelligent  men  capable  of  being  priests  at  the  altar  of 
the  household ;  never  a  time  when  affection  was  lifted  up  to 
a  higher  plane ;  when  the  love  husband  and  wife  bore  to  each 
other  so  nearly  mingled  with  the  love  they  bore  to  their 
Father  in  heaven,  and  in  which  the  family  was  so  near  the 
gate  of  heaven  as  it  is  to-day. 

5.  Has  the  Christian  religion  shown  any  signs  of  failing  as 


The  State  of  Christianity  To-day.         473 

a  reforming  power  ?  It  came  into  the  world,  in  part,  to  do  a 
positive  work.  It  came  also  to  do  an  erasive  work.  It  was 
to  correct  evil  as  well  as  to  establish  good.  We  have  just 
passed  through  one  of  the  greatest  battles  in  history.  What 
has  been  the  source  of  that  influence  which  called  this  nation 
to  its  debt  of  conscience,  and  aroused  it  from  its  torpor  ?  For 
years  the  unwilling  ear  was  besieged,  and  the  repugnant 
heart  assaulted.  Whence  came  these  doctrines  of  human  lib- 
erty ?  Whence  came  those  clear,  those  fervid  truths  of  hu- 
manity, that  aroused  the  nation's  heart  and  the  nation's  con- 
science, and  fortified  it  to-43ear  all  that  it  had  to  endure  car- 
rying on  to  victory  the  great  conflict  that  now  happily  is 
terminated  ?  Were  those  truths  that  sprung  from  some  new 
sphere,  unuttered,  unknown  before  ?  Were  not  the  very 
truths  that  have  aroused  this  nation  and  given  it  a  new  en- 
thusiasm, or  revived  and  made  practical  the  old — were  they 
not  the  long-neglected  doctrines  of  human  rights — the  doc- 
trines of  ther  Puritans,  of  the  Reformers,  of  Christianity  and 
the  New  Testament?  And  are  we,  just  as  we  are  gathering 
the  trophies,  just  as  we  are  beginning  to  see  the  laurels 
from  one  of  the  noblest  conflicts  the  Gospel  has  incited  and 
achieved,  are  we  at  this  moment  to  bewail  the  waning  forces 
of  the  Gospel  ?  Is  it  the  time,  when  men  are  victors,  for  them 
to  begm  to  doubt  whether  their  weapons  have  power  in 
them? 

Is  the  power  of  Christianity  failing  in  its  application  to  the 
moi-als  of  the  day  ?  Is  there  less  conscience,  less  hope,  less 
desire  to  cleanse  and  purify  the  individual,  less  earnest  pur- 
pose to  reform  communities  to-day  than  there  has  been  in  the 
past  ?  More ;  more  here,  more  in  England,  more  on  the  Con- 
tinent than  there  ever  has  been  before. 

We  must  not  judge  of  the  state  of  the  Christian  world  by 
what  we  find  in  such  cities  as  this,  where  the  confluent  streams 
of  immigration  fill  us  with  mud.  For  as  the  deltas  of  the 
Nile  and  the  Mississipj^i  are  formed  by  the  soil  of  continents 
washed  down,  so  here  we  have  the  detritus  of  the  world  cast 


47-i         The  State  of  Christianity  To-day. 

down  upon  us.  But  even  in  New  York  and  Brooklyn  I  be- 
lieve there  never  was  a  time  when  there  were  so  many  men 
that  prayed,  so  many  that  labored  for  the  community's  mor- 
als, so  many  with  vigorous  faith,  so  many  men  able  to  show 
their  faith  by  its  fruit,  as  to-day.  Consider  the  Temperance 
reformation.  It  is  not  a  movement  of  the  Church,  although, 
thanks  to  God,  there  are  a  great  many  churches  warmly  en- 
gaged in  it.  But  go  with  the  different  associations ;  look  at 
the  men  who  are  carrying  out  this  work — men  of  varied  sta- 
tion, statesmen,  merchants,  draymen,  mechanics,  laborers  of 
all  kinds,  many  of  whom  are  in  the  Church,  more  of  whom 
perhaps  are  not.  Tell  me  whether  there  is  throughout  the 
whole  community  a  decadence.  Tell  me  whether  that  spirit 
which  is  kindled  at  the  altar  does  not  go  forth,  and  penetrate, 
though  in  decreasing  strength,  to  the  extremest  parts  of  the 
community. 

Let  the  men  who  are  crying  out  that  their  liberties  are  in- 
vaded be  our  witnesses.  Let  those  men  who  are  beginning 
to  be  so  uneasy,  because  they  are  not  at  liberty  with  impuni- 
ty to  desecrate  the  Sabbath-day,  be  our  witnesses.  Religion 
dying  ?  What  then  mean  the  execrations  of  wicked  men  ? 
The  Church  losing  its  power?  "Why  then  are  men  so  berat- 
ing the  Church?  Why  are  they  so  complaining  of  its  intru- 
sion, telling  us  to  stay  at  home  and  preach  the  Gosj^el,  and 
not  to  meddle  with  things  that  do  not  concern  us  ?  It  is  the 
light  which  streams  from  the  Gospel  which  wakes  the  owls 
and  the  bats.  Those  birds  of  the  night  know  what  ails  them, 
and  it  is  that  there  is  a  spirit  of  true  religion  working  out  to- 
ward the  reformation  of  the  community ;  never  more  than 
now,  and  never  more  needed. 

6.  Has  the  Christian  spirit  lost  its  power  over  government 
and  public  affairs?  I  think  the  conscience  of  our  community 
never  was  so  high  as  it  is  to-day.  The  last  triumph  of  the 
Gospel  will  be  the  triumph  manifested  in  public  administra- 
tions. Selfishness,  and  a  very  low  standard  of  justice,  must 
be  expected,  in  the  average  of  our  communities,  to  continue 


•  The  State  of  Christianity  To-day.         475 

to  the  last.  Nevertheless,!  think  no  man  who  is  accustomed 
to  study  the  phases  of  affairs  but  must  admit  that  there  is  a 
higher  tone  of  conscience  in  public  affairs  to-day — I  will  not 
say  in  Legislatures,  but  in  the  community;  and  Legislatures, 
reflecting  the  public  sentiment  of  the  community,  are  enforc- 
ing a  higher  degree  of  justice  than  has  heretofore  been  known 
in  the  history  of  our  nation. 

And  that  which  is  true  of  our  land  is  true  of  England. 
The  movement  of  her  middle  and  lower  classes  for  justice 
and  equal  rights  is  a  movement  for  a  larger  manhood.  The 
movements  upon  the  Continent  are  scarcely  less  obvious; 
they  are  in  the  same  direction,  and  come  from  the  same 
source.  Every  where  is  the  Gosj)el  leavening  public  admin- 
istrations, and  raising  up  an  intelligent  Christian  public  sen- 
timent which  is  itself  as  powerful  upon  governments  as  winds 
are  upon  the  sails  of  ships. 

If  these  things  be  so,  are  we  quite  ready  yet  to  assume  the 
condition  of  mourning  ?  Do  we  need  to  give  up  our  Bibles  ? 
Need  we  drop  our  faith  in  Christ,  our  faith  in  the  providence 
of  God,  our  faith  in  the  instrumentality  of  the  Church,  our 
faith  in  the  power  of  revealed  religion  ?  On  the  contrary, 
of  all  periods  of  the  world,  this  would  be  the  last  that  I 
should  have  chosen  to  lift  up  my  hands  in  despair  and  say, 
Religion  is  dying  'out,  and  must  yield  to  a  new  dispensation. 
There  have  been  some  who  have  desired  to  bring  a  new  rev- 
elation ;  but  it  was  like  the  foam  of  the  restless  sea  chafing 
upon  the  shore,  which,  when  a  man  had  gathered  it,  had  not 
substance  enough  to  keep  its  form  even  while  he  looked 
upon  it. 

We  may  expect  some  changes,  but  none  other  than  to 
deepen  religious  life  and  faith  in  religious  truth.  There  will 
be  a  better  understanding  of  the  human  heart.  There  will 
be  better  modes  of  reaching  it  with  religious  truth.  There 
will  be  modifications  of  worship.  Some  things  will  be  left 
off;  many  things  will  be  added;  but  no  amount  of  change 
in  these  external  instrumentalities  will  affect  in  the  slisfhtest 


476  The  State  of  Christianity  To-day.  • 

degree  the  power  of  the  religious  element — the  spiritual  ele- 
ment in  man.  Nature,  well  interpreted,  will  throw  more  and 
more  light  upon  God's  methods  of  ci-eation  and  of  adminis- 
tration. And  I  doubt  not  we  are  yet  to  see  the  true  glory 
of  revelation  in  respect  to  God's  character  and  God's  admin- 
istration. But  it  will  he  but  the  augmenting  of  that  which 
we  already  have  in  the  germ  form.  It  will  be  but  new  il- 
lustrations of  old  truths.  Old  obscurities  will  be  cleared  up, 
and  old  errors  corrected ;  but,  in  the  main,  the  views  which 
have  already  developed  themselves  in  the  minds  of  the  Chris- 
tian world  upon  the  nature  of  God — the  Father,  Son,  and 
Holy  Ghost  —  will  remain  unchanged.  They  will  grow 
brighter  and  clearer ;  but,  I  take  it,  there  are  no  signs  to 
show  they  will  be  essentially  modified. 

The  instrumentalities  of  religion  hereafter,  we  may  believe, 
will  be  more  various.  Laws,  and  customs,  and  institutions, 
being  filled  with  a  religious  spirit,  will  become  means  of 
grace  to  a  degree  that  hitherto  they  have  never  done.  More 
and  more  will  be  done  by  extra  ecclesiastical  eflTorts,  while, 
at  the  same  time,  no  less  will  be  done  by  direct  Church  in- 
fluences. 

What  then  ?  These  changes  and  modifications  do  not  ar- 
gue the  decadence  of  the  religious  clement,  but  simply  the 
expansion  of  its  instrumentality.  Hence  "the  folly  of  all  at- 
tempts to  do  away  with  the  Church  on  the  one  side,  and  the 
equal  folly  of  attempts  to  confine  all  that  is  to  be  done  within 
the  Church.  Both  of  them  are  extremes,  and  both  of  them 
are  extremes  of  folly. 

There  are  a  great  many  that  think  preaching  is  worn  out. 
There  is  a  great  deal  of  preaching  worn  out.  A  great  many 
people  think  churches  useless.  There  are  a  great  many 
churches  individually  useless.  Would  you  judge  the  family 
in  the  same  way  ?  Would  you  say  the  fatherhood  is  worn 
out  because  there  are  a  great  many  poor  husbands  and  fa- 
thers? Would  you  say  the  family  is  all  gone  to  ruin  be- 
cause there  are  a  great  many  drunkards,  and  gamblers,  and 


The  State  of  Christianity  To-day.         477 

forsaken  families  ?  There  are  isolated  cases  in  the  communi- 
ty where  the  Church  and  the  ministry  greatly  need  i-eforma- 
tion,  but  he  certainly  is  a  bold  man  who  at  present  would 
argue  the  need,  propriety,  wisdom,  or  safety  of  setting  aside 
that  which,  for  the  present,  may  be  considered  the  grand  in- 
strumentality by  which  God  is  keeping  up  the  conscience 
and  intoning  the  moral  feeling.  That  there  may  come  a  day 
when  the  Church  itself  shall  have  so  wrought  out  the  relig- 
ious life  in  the  household  that  the  household  will  take  in  hand 
that  which  now  the  Church  does,  I  will  not  deny ;  but  at 
present  it  is  the  enginery  of  God. 

On  the  other  hand,  it  seems  to  me  that  nothing  can  be  so 
unwise  as  that  misunderstanding  spirit  which  is  jealous  of 
any  good  done  except  through  the  Church  itself  That  is 
like  a  schoolmaster  who  is  waking  the  genius  and  intellect 
of  a  child,  and  who,  when  that  child  begins  to  point  out  new 
things  in  any  direction,  insists  that  the  child  shall  not  think 
any  thing  except  through  him.  The  glory  of  the  schoolmas- 
ter is  to  make  the  child  think  more  than  the  schoolmaster 
can.  It  is  to  multiply  in  his  scholars  the  effects  he  could  not 
individually  produce.  The  glory  of  the  Church  is  to  multi- 
ply the  men  outside  of  the  Church  who  work.  Why  do  I 
preach  here  ?  Simply  for  the  good  that  is  done  here  ?  It  is 
for  the  good  which  is  done  out,  as  much  as  for  that  which  is 
done  in.  They  that  listen  here  are  to  go  home  and  repeat 
the  truth,  often  in  better  forms  practically,  frequently  with 
better  illustrations  intellectually.  They  are  to  take  up  the 
Gospel,  and  reproduce  its  facts  every  where.  This  is  but  an 
altar  whence  every  man  is  to  take  his  kindling  brand  and  go 
out  of  the  Church  to  work  every  where.  The  Church  may 
arouse  the  conscience  to  a  higher  morality,  but  it  ought  not 
:  to  insist  upon  it  that  all  efforts  to  advance  morality  shall  be 
Church  efforts.  Do  I  preach  temperance  here  ?  I  ought  to. 
But  it  should  not  prevent  me  from  sympathizing  with  every 
organization  outside  of  the  Church  for  the  promotion  of  tem- 
perance. 


478         The  State  of  Christianity  To-day. 

The  attempts  to  include  in  the  ecclesiastical  bonds  of  the 
Church  all  moral  instrumentalities  is  against  the  order  of 
divine  Providence  and  against  possibilities.  The  Church 
was  not  meant  for  any  such  purpose  as  that.  The  sun  might 
just  as  well  say, "  There  shall  be  no  growth  except  in  the 
sun;"  whereas  its  mission  is  to  fructify  all  the  planets,  and 
carry  life  into  worlds  remote  from  itself.  The  true  Church 
so  conducts  itself,  and  so  inspires  those  around  it,  that  the 
whole  community  becomes,  as  it  were,  in  some  sense,  a  col- 
laterated  Church,  rej)eating  its  influences,  echoing  its  joyful 
sounds,  and  carrying  on  the  work  outside  its  ecclesiastical 
bounds.  The  time  will  come  when  the  whole  community 
will  be  the  Church ;  not  by  being  brought  within  common 
walls,  or  by  being  included  within  denominational  names,  but 
because  no  man  shall  have  occasion  to  say  to  his  neighbor, 
"  Know  the  Lord,"  but  all  shall  know  him,  from  the  least  to 
the  greatest. 

We  are  going  on  toward  that  day.  This  is  not  the  time 
for  any  man  to  cast  away  his  faith  in  that  power  which  has 
brought  us  to  this  day,  which  has  given  us  the  artillery  with 
which  we  have  combated  so  long  the  powers  of  the  world. 
Our  fathers  with  their  faith  built  this  fair  fabric.  They  laid 
its  foundations  in  trust  in  God.  Shall  we  take  it  down  by 
enervating  skepticism  ?  They  carried  up  its  Avails  to  the  hon- 
or of  his  name  and  the  glory  of  religion.  And  are  we,  dis- 
honored and  shrunken  of  spirit,  to  desecrate  the  altars  which 
they  left  with  sacred  fires  burning  thereon  ? 

Tliere  never  was  a  time,  young  men,  when  you  had  so  little 
occasion  to  be  ashamed  of  Christ  or  of  religion.  There  never 
was  a  time  when  you  could  so  ill  afford  to  throw  all  ecclesi- 
astical influences  behmd  your  backs.  There  never  was  a 
time  when  there  was  more  faith  in  God,  in  the  Mediator,  in 
the  Holy  Ghost,  in  the  judgment  day,  in  eternity.  If  men 
all  around  you,  with  all  manner  of  books  and  papers,  are  tell- 
ing you  glozing  tales  of  the  decadence  of  religion,  say  to 
them,  "Let  the  dead  bury  their  dead,"  but  follow  thou  Christ. 


The  State  of  Christianity  To-day.         479 

It  is  a  deceit.  It  is  a  snare.  It  is  a  falselioocL  The  glory 
of  religion  was  never  so  great.  Its  need  was  never  more  ur- 
gent. Its  fruits  were  never  more  ample.  Its  ministers  were 
never  more  inspired  by  God's  ministering  angels  than  now. 
May  God  grant  that  the  glorious  days  of  revival  may  come 
speedily,  that  shall  fill  the  whole  continent  with  their  light 
and  their  warmth,  as  in  the  summer's  sun,  and  may  there 
grow  up  all  virtue,  and  all  morality,  and  all  blessedness,  from 
sea  to  sea,  from  the  north  to  the  extremest  south ;  and  then 
may  the  devotional  spirit,  still  burning  under  the  sacred  in- 
fluence, gird  the  world  with  salvation,  that  the  whole  earth 
may  know  the  Lord. 


TEXTS  AND   SCRIPTURE   PASSAGES 
COMMENTED  UPON. 

[Those  marked  witli  an  asterisk  (*)  are  passages  quoted  and  commented  on  in  the  body  of 
the  scituon.    The  others  are  the  texts  of  the  discourses.] 


Genesis,  xxviii.,  10-13,  vol.  ii.,  p.  445. 
.    *xlvii.,  7-10,  vol.  i.,  p.  328. 
xlviii.,  1-7,  vol.  i.,  p.  325. 
"■"Exodus,  xxxiv.,  6,  7,  vol.  ii.,  p.  91, 

226. 
*Deiit.,  xxxii.,  39-48,  vol.  i.,  p.  90. 
*2  Sam.,  xii.,  15-24,  vol.  ii.,  p.  358. 
Psalm  xxxvii.,  3-9,  vol.  ii.,  p.  11. 
Eccles.,  xii.,  1,  vol.  ii.,  p.  323. 
kSol.  Song,  ii.,  11-13,  vol.  i.,  p.  305. 
*Isa.,  xlii.,  3,  vol.  i.,  p.  98. 

*lv.,  6-12,  vol.  i.,  p.  231, 

lv.,10,  11,  vol.  i.,p.  223. 
Micah,  vii.,  IS,  vol.  ii.,  p.  225. 
Matt.,  iv.,  18,  19,  vol.  i.,  p.  455. 

*v.,46-48,  vol.  i.,p.  40. 

vi.,  26,  28,  29,  vol.  i.,  p.  183. 

*xiii.,  33,  vol.  ii.,  p.  15. 

*xx.,  20-28,  vol.  i.,  p.  153. 

xxii.,  34-40,  vol.  ii.,  p.  137. 

*xxvi.,  6-14,  vol.  i.,p.  283. 

xxvii.,  22,  vol.  i.,  p.  347. 

xxvii.,  61,  vol.  i.,  p.  55. 
Mark,  x.,  46-52,  vol.  i.,  p.  257. 

XV.,  15-20,  vol.  i.,p.  161. 
Liike,  x.,  38-42,  vol.  i.,  p.  273. 

xii.,]6-21,vol.  ii.,p.  427. 

xvi.,  10,  vol.  i.,  p.  239. 

xxiv.,  13-15,  vol.  i.,  p.  475. 
John,  L,  4,  5,  vol.  i.,  p.  119. 

i.,  12,  13,  vol.  ii.,  p.  307. 

*iii,  8,  vol.  ii.,p.  312. 

vi.,  63,  vol.  ii.,  p.  303. 

xii.,  24,  25,  vol.  i.,  p.  141. 

*xiv.,  8,  9,  vol.  i.,  p.  79. 


John,  xix.,  41,  42,  vol.  i.,  p.  55. 
*Acts,  ix.,  8-19,  vol.  ii.,  p.  66. 

*x.,  9-10,  vol.  ii.,p.  65. 

xxi.,14,  vol.  ii.,p.  347. 

xxvi.,  19,  vol.  ii.,  p.  61. 
Romans,  viii.,  3,  vol.  ii.,  p.  463. 

viii.,  14,  15,  vol.  i.,  p.  411. 

1  Cor.,i.,22-24,  vol.  i.,p.  385. 

ii.,  1,2,  vol.  ii.,  p.  167,  191. 
ii.,  2-5,  vol.  i.,  p.  13. 
iii.,  9,  vol.  ii.,  p.  245. 
vii.,  29-32,  vol.  i.,  p.  363. 
*viii.,  19-23,vol.  i.,p.  403. 

2  Cor.,x.,  1,  vol.  i.,  p.  91. 
*Gal.,iv.,30,  vol.  i.,p.  426. 

*v.,  13,  14,  vol.  ii.,  p.  141. 
*v.,  22,  23,  vol.  ii.,  p.  371. 
Eph.,  i.,  15-2.3,  vol.  i.,  p.  75. 
i.,  22,  23,  vol.  ii.,  p.  389. 
iii.,  20,  21,  vol.  ii.,  p.  409. 

1  Tim.,  i.,  16,  vol.  ii.,  p.  207. 

2  Tim.,  iii.,  14-17,  vol.  ii.,  p.  285, 
Hebrews,  ii.,  14-18,  vol.  ii.,  p.  37. 

*iv.,  12,  vol.  i.,p.  444. 
iv.,  14-16,  vol.  i.,p.  431. 
vii.,  25,  vol.  ii.,  p.  111. 
*.xii.,  11,  vol.  i.,p.  308. 
xiii.,  8,  vol.  ii.,  p.  89. 
Jamos,  V. ,  2,  vol.  i. ,  p.  289. 
*l  John,  iv.,  2,  vol.  i.,  p.  371. 

iv.,  9-11,  vol.  i.,p.  35. 
Rev.,  ii.,  17,  vol.  i.,  p.  203. 
*v.,6-14,  vol.  ii.,p.  39. 
vii.,  14,  vol.  ii.,p.  203. 
*Prov.,  x.xii.,  6,  vol,  i.,  p.  192. 


II— II  H 


INDEX, 


Activity,  duty  of,  ii.,  356,  3G2. 

encouragement  to,  ii. ,  420. 

in  secular  things  right,  ii.,  448. 

value  of,  i.,  281. 
Appetite,  sins  of,  i.,  295. 
Atonement,  i.,  352. 

theories  of,  ii.,  120. 

Belief  contrasted  with  faith,  i.,  419- 
421. 

importance  of,  ii. ,  285. 

sincerity  not  sufKcient,ii. ,  255, 290. 
Bible,  object  of,  i.,  389 ;  ii.,  225,  298. 
Bi'otherhood  of  man,  i.,  335. 

Care,  causes  of,  i.,  190-192,  278. 

cure  of,  i.,  375. 
Christ  a  present  Savior,  i.,  G7, 110. 

a  sublime  radical,  i.,  134. 

as  he  appeared  to  the  Jews,  i.,  126. 

characteristics  of  his  teachings,  i., 
130-133. 

contrasted  with  Greek  philoso- 
phers, i.,  122. 

crucified,  tine  power  of  preach- 
ing,!., 13-18, 152,406;  ii.,109, 
193,  197. 

cure  of  the  blind  man,  i. ,  257-262. 

earthly  circumstances,  i., 142-148. 

God  revealed  in,  i.,  106. 

human  nature  of,  ii. ,  42. 

influence  on  society,  i.,  149. 

intercession  of,  ii..  111. 

mock  coronation  described,  i. ,  161- 
164. 

moral  power  of  his  teachings,  i., 
121. 

object  of  our  allegiance,  i.,  78. 

object  of  our  love,  i. ,  354. 

object  of  our  obedience,  i. ,  355. 

object  of  our  worship,  i.,  80-86, 
356,  436. 


Christ,  only  hope  of  salvation,  i. ,  108. 
our  comfort  in  sorrow,  1.,  66-70, 

312. 
personal  claims  on  us,  i.,  349. 
personal  experience  of,  i.,  475  ; 

ii.,  130. 
power  of  personal  presence,  ii., 

201,305. 
relation  to  the  human  soul,  i.,  77. 
second  coming  of,  ii.,  389. 
seeming  failm-e  and  real  success, 

i.,  148-151. 
source  of  his  power,  i.,  123. 
suifering  love  of,  i.,  162;  ii.,  51. 
sympathy  of,i.,  274,  431. 
trial  before  Pilate,  i.,  347-349, 

358. 
with  Martha  and  Mary,  i.,  273- 

276. 
with  the  common  people,  i.,  130. 
See  Atonement,  Divinity,  Incar- 
nation, Sufiering. 
Christian  character  described, ii.,  306. 
the  best  evidence  of  Christianity, 
ii.,  315,  375. 
Christian  experience,  necessary  to  a 
successful  ministry,  i. ,  20,  478 ;  ii. , 
195. 
of  God's  love,  i.,  43. 
of  God's  presence,  i.,  330 ;  ii.,  52. 
development  of,  ii.,  54,  248,  252. 
Christianity,  divine  and  pennanent,  i. , 
385;  ii.,465. 

still  a  vital  power,  i.,  17 ;  ii.,  303. 
Chui"ch,  imperfections  in,  i. ,  23. 
present  power  of,  ii.,  466,  476. 
the  true  test  of,  ii.,  376. 
Conscience  and  love  contrasted,  i.,  166, 
169. 
cori'upt,  ii. ,  78. 
Conversion  described,  ii.,  367. 
duty  of  laboring  for,  i. ,  458. 


484 


Index. 


Conversion,  how  to  secure,  i.,  460. 
illustrated,  ii.,  247. 
instantaneous,  ii.,  251. 
necessity  of,  ii.,  161. 

Dancing,  evils  of,  ii.,  328. 
Death,  certainty  of,  ii. ,  43G. 

contemplated,  i.,  376-378,  422, 

480;  ii.,128. 
often  premature,  ii.,  332. 
to  the  Christian,  glorious,  i.,  52; 
ii.,314. 
Depra^'ity.     See  Man. 
Divinity  of  Christ,  i.,  75, 106,  434;  ii., 

38-41,191. 
Doctrines,  not  the  essence  of  religion, 

i.,3SG. 
Doctrinal  preaching,  i.,  27 ;  ii.,  174. 

Earthly  good  a  symbol  of  things  to 

come,  i.,  373. 
not  to  be  despised,  i.,  369,  370 
imsatisfying,  i.,  365. 
Earthly  plans  must  include  eternity, 

ii.,449. 
Education,  value  of,  ii.,  335. 
Esau  and  Jacob,  i. ,  325. 
Ethics,  duty  of  preaching  on,  i.,  27-30. 
Events,  teaching  of,  ii.,  347. 
Everlasting  punishment,  i.,  109,  111. 
Evidence  of  Christianity,  ii.,  315,  375. 

Faith  in  Christ  contrasted  with  doc- 
trinal belief,  i.,  419-421. 
Flowers,  lessons  from,  i. ,  1 83. 
Following  Christ  in  suffering,  i.,  155. 
Foresight,  a  duty,  ii.,  332. 
Forgiveness,  duty  of,  ii. ,  238. 

of  God,  ii.,  230-235. 
Freedmen,  sermon  to,  ii.,  11. 

Garden,  sepulchre  in,  i.,  55. 
Genius  defined,  i.,  36. 
God,  fatherhood  of,  i.,  411. 

forgiveness,  ii. ,  230-235. 

gentleness,  i.,  91. 

greatness,  i. ,  93. 

his  care  of  us,  i.,  187-190. 

immutability,  ii.,  89. 

in  nature,  i.,  439. 

justice,  ii.,  295. 

knows  the  heart,  i.,  442,  445. 

long-suft'eiing,  ii.,  207. 

our  help,  i.,  441;  ii.,  124,  417. 

passibiUty,  ii.,  48,  93-98,  214, 


God,  patience,  ii.,  225. 

repentance,  ii. ,  99. 

revealed  in  Christ,  i.,  106. 

sensitiveness,  i.,  96. 

sovereignty,  i.,  417. 

titles,!.,  414. 

true  conception  of,  derived  from 
human  experience,  ii.,  44-47, 
149. 

unsearchableness,  i.,  103. 

See  Love,  Suffering. 
Gods  of  the  heathen  described,  ii.,  90. 
Gospel,  for  the  poor,  i. ,  405. 

Happiness,  of  earth  transient,  ii.,  438. 

popular  idea  of,  i.,  60. 
Health,  a  duty,  ii.,  329,  394. 
Heresy-hunting,  ii.,  258. 
Holy  Spirit,  agency  in  conversion,  ii., 
369. 

influence  of,  ii.,  312,  382. 
Hope,  in  trouble,  i.,  310. 
Humor  in  the  pulpit,  i.,  26. 
Humphrey,  Hon.  James,  sermon  after 

the  death  of,  i.,  363. 

Immortahty,i.,320;  ii.,  294. 

revealed  by  Christ,  i.,  398. 
Incarnation,  ii.,  37,  389. 

object  of,  i.,  167 ;  ii.,  50. 
Indolence,  i.,  293. 
Infants,  salvation  of,  i.,  107. 
Institutions  and  ordinances  not  relig- 
ion, i.,  129. 


Jacob  and  Esau,  i.,  325. 
Jacob's  ladder,  ii.,  445. 
Jacob's  sorrow,  i. ,  334. 
Judging  fellow-men,  ii.,  153. 

Kingdom  of  God,  its  growth,  ii.,  12- 
16,  395. 

Law  of  descent,  ii.,  392. 

Laymen,  responsibility  of,  i.,  464-470. 

Liberty  of  the  pulpit,  i.,  25-30;   ii., 

172,  178,  182,401. 
Life,   good  and  evil,  illustrated,  ii., 

459. 
Little  sins,  i.,  292. 

danger  of,  i.,  241,  300. 
described,!.,  242-253. 
Lord's  Supper,  invitations  to,  i. ,  70, 87. 
Love  and  conscience   contrasted,  i., 

166, 169. 


Index. 


485 


Love,  described,  ii.,371. 

the  essence  of  religion,  i. ,  1 G9 ;  ii. , 

137,  309. 
the  key  to  God's  dealings,  ii. ,  3G0. 
Love  of  God,  i.,  35,  435-438. 
abuse  of,  i.,  44. 
a  reason  for  consecration,  ii. ,  25, 

31. 
a  reason  for  faith,  i.,  49. 
a  reason  for  gratitude,  i.,  48. 
a  reason  for  repentance,  i.,  50,111, 

447;  ii.,235. 
continuous,  i. ,  42. 
curative,  i.,  47;  ii.,  53,  56,  240. 
illustrated,  i.,  39,  44,  45,  47,  213- 

215. 
manifested  in  nature,  i.,  51;  ii., 

413. 
spontaneous,  i.,  35  ;  ii.,  411 
to  sinners,  i.,  40,  424,  444. 
unrecognized,  i.,  46. 

Man,  sinful,  i.,  41,  99-102,  395;   ii., 
208,  215-220,  229,  246,  294. 
spiritually  dead,  i.,  19. 

Manna,  spiritual  meaning  of,  i. ,  203- 
207. 

Marys,  at  the  tomb,  i.,  55-59. 

Millennium,  ii.,  389. 

Miracles,  i.,  403. 

Morality  not  religion,  ii. ,  379, 434, 452. 

Nature,  a  manifestation  of  God's  love, 
i.,51;  ii.,413. 
flowers,  i.,  183. 
spring,  i.,  305-309. 
storm,  i.,  223;  ii.,  267.  , 

teachings  of,  i. ,  94. 
the  moth-miller,  i. ,  289. 

•Old  age,  preparation  for,  ii.,  323. 

Passions,  sins  of,  i.,  297. 
Paul,  at  Cffisarea,  ii.,  347. 

at  Corinth,  i.,  14;  ii.,  167. 

conversion  of,  ii. ,  66. 

natiu'al  character  of,  ii.,  61. 
Peace,  not  obtained  by  sacrifice  of  prin- 
ciple, i.,  136-138. 

only  found  in  Christ,  ii.,  310. 
Personal  experiences,  of  Christ,  i. ,  475 ; 
ii.,  130. 

of  trust,  i.,  192. 

pm'pose  in  preaching,  i.,  19-32. 
Personal  influence,  i. ,  455. 


Pharisees  and  Sadducees  described,  i., 

123-126. 
Piety,  evidence  of,  ii.,  157,  371,  381. 
necessary  to  a  right  life,  ii.,  452. 
to  be  sought  in  youth,  ii. ,  337, 456. 
Plymouth  Church,  i. ,  21,  31 ;  ii.,  422. 
Power,  of  Christ's  teaching,  i.,  121. 
of  goodness,  i.,  231-236. 
of  spiritual  truths,  i.,  152-154. 
Prayer,  encouragement  to,  ii.,  419. 

power  of,  ii.,  118. 
Prayers,  i.,  112, 177, 196, 217, 269;  ii., 

32,  83, 105,  279,  340,  383. 
Preaching,  Christ,  ii.,  167,  191. 

Christ  crucified,  true  power  of,  i., 
13-18,  152,  406;  ii.,  169,  193, 
197. 
Christian  experience  necessary  to, 

i.,  20,  478;  ii.,  195. 
doctrinal,  i.,  27;  ii.,  174. 
humor  in,  i.,  26. 
methods  of,  i. ,  28. 
to  the  pool-,  i. ,  24. 
liberty  in,  i.,  25-30;  ii.,  172-178, 

182,401. 
See  Personal  Experiences. 
Proverbs,  influence  of,  ii.,  286. 
PubUc  affairs,  Christ  in,  ii.,  397. 

duty  of  preaching  on,  i. ,  28  ;  ii. , 
182,  401. 
Punishment  everlasting,  i.,  109,  111. 

Redemption,  glory  of,  ii.,  404. 

through  suffering,  i.,  164-167. 
Reform,  love  the  true  instrument  of, 

i.,  172;  ii.,199. 
Regeneration,  i. ,  396. 

a  divine  work,  ii.,  367,  369. 
necessity  of,  ii.,  308,  317. 
Religion,  contrasted  with  morality,  ii. ,  \ 
379,  434,  452. 
love  the  essence  of,  i.,  169;  ii., 

137,  309. 
present  state  of,  ii.,  470-475. 
true  idea  of,  ii. ,  1 78. 
Religious  truths  spiritually  discerned, 

ii.,  373. 
Revelation  of  God's  will  in  providence, 

ii.,  350-356. 
Revivals  among  children,  i.,  317. 
in  Ph-mouth  Church,  i.,  21. 

Sabbath,  Christ's  estimate  of,  i.,  133. 
Sadducees,  description  of,  i.,  123. 
Salvation,  comprehensive,  ii.,  181, 401. 


486 


Index. 


Salvation,  of  infants,  i.,  107. 

only  through  Christ,  i.,  108. 

present,  i.,  67, 110. 
Science  and  religion,  i.,  391 ;  ii.,  403, 

468. 
Sectarianism  illustrated,  ii.,  256. 
Self-conceit,  folly  of,  ii.,  361. 
Self-denial,  i.,  175-177,  400. 

indispensable,  ii. ,  202. 
Sepulchre  in  the  garden,  i.,  55. 
Sin  a  personal  offense  against  God, 
ii.,227. 

See  Little  Sins. 
Sinners,  hope  for,  ii.,  221,  240. 

spirituaUy  bUnd,  i.,  263-269. 
Skepticism,  cause  of,  ii. ,  159. 

of  this  age,  ii. ,  469. 

shallow,  ii.,  17. 
Sorrow,  always  a  surprise,  i. ,  61 . 

a  universal  experience,  i.,  313. 

Christ  our  comfort  in,  i.,  66-70, 
312. 

first  effect  of,  i. ,  64. 

inevitable,  i.,  62. 

true  blessedness  of,  i. ,  65-69. 

of  Jacob,  i. ,  334. 
South,  future  of,  ii.,  28. 
Special  pro\idence,  i.,  186. 
Spiritual  truths,  power  of,  i.,  152-154. 
Stimulants,  dangerous,  ii.,  330. 


Submission,  defined,  ii.,  350,  356-364. 

joy  of,  i.,  316. 
Suffering,  of  Christ,  i.,  159, 161. 

of  God,  i.,  392;  ii.,42,  97. 

ministration  of,  i.,  155-158,  315, 
367;  ii.,  23,  263,  363. 
Sympathy  of  Christ,  i.,  274,  431. 

of  God,  ii.,  116. 

Tomb  of  Christ,  Marys  at  the,  i. ,  55- 

59. 
Trust  in   God,  i.,  188;  ii.,  11,  102, 

313. 
Truth  superior  to  institutions,  i.,  132. 

Vices  of  youth  punished  in  old  age,  ii., 

327. 
Vision  hours,  i.,  364-367;  ii.,  61,  447,, 

458. 

Waiting  on  God,  ii.,  11. 
Wicked  men  not  enviable,  ii.,  19. 
Woman's  need  of  Christ,  ii. ,  452,  460. 
Workers  and  thinkers,  i. ,  276. 
World,  condition  of,  ii.,  212,  398. 

Young  men,  appeal  to,  ii.,  454. 
Youthfid  aspirations  generally  noble, 
ii.,  450. 


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ciple of  Construction.  By  J.  G.  Wood,  M.A.,  F.L.S.,  Author  of  "Illus- 
trated Natural  History."  ■  With  about  140  Illustrations,  engraved  by  G. 
Pearson,  from  Original  Designs  made  by  F.  W.  Keyl  and  E.  A.  Smith,  un- 
der the  Author's  Superintendence.  Svo,  Cloth,  Beveled  Edges,  $4  50 ;  Full 
Morocco,  $8  00. 

ALCOCK'S  JAPAN.  The  Capital  of  the  Tycoon :  A  Narrative  of  a  Three 
Years'  Residence  in  Japan.  By  Sir  Rdtherfokd  Alcook,  K.C.B.,  Her  Maj- 
esty's Envoy  Extraordinary  and  Minister  Plenipotentiary  in  Japan.  With 
Maps  and  Engravings.    2  vols.,  12mo,  Cloth,  $3  50. 

ALFORD'S  GREEK  TESTAMENT.  The  Greek  Testament:  with  a  crit- 
ically-revised Text;  a  Digest  of  Various  Readings;  Marginal  References 
to  Verbal  and  Idiomatic  Usage :  Prolegomena ;  and  a  Critical  and  Ese- 
getical  Commentary.  For  the  Use  ofTheological  Students  and  Minis- 
ters. By  Henry  Alfokp,  D.D.,  Dean  of  Canterbury.  Vol.  I.,  containing 
the  Four  Gospels.  944  pages,  Svo,  Cloth,  $6  00 ;  Sheep,  $0  50 ;  Half  Call; 
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ALISON'S- HISTORY  OF  EUROPE.  First  Sebies:  From  the  Commence- 
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bons, in  1S15.  [In  addition  to  the  Notes  on  Chapter  LXXVI.,  which  cor- 
rect the  errors  of  the  original  work  concerning  the  United  States,  a  co- 
pious Analytical  Index  has  been  appended  to  this  American  edition.] 
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BURNS'S  LIFE  AND  WORKS.  The  Life  and  Works  of  Robert  Barns.  Ed- 
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BAETH'S  NORTH  AND  CENTRAL  AFRICA.  Travels  and  Discoveries  in 
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under  the  Auspices  of  H.B.M.'s  "Government,  in  the  Years  1849-1855.  By 
Henry  Bartu,  Ph.D.,  D.C.L.  Illustrated.  Complete  in  3  vols.,  8vo,  Cloth, 
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BEECHER'S  AUTOBIOGRAPHY,  &c.  Autobiography,  Correspondence, 
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$3  00. 

CARLYLE'S  FREDERICK  THE  GREAT.  History  of  Friedrich  II.,  called 
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CARLYLE'S  FRENCH  REVOLUTION.  History  of  the  French  Revolu- 
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CARLYLE'S  OLIVER  CROMWELL.  Letters  and  Speeches  of  Oliver  Crom- 
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CLAYTON'S  QUEENS  OF  SONG.  Queens  of  Song:  Being  Memoirs  of 
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which  is  added  a  Chronological  List  of  all  the  Operas  that  have  been  per- 
formed in  Europe.  Bv  Ellen  Ckeathoene  Clayton.  With  Portraits. 
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COLERIDGE'S  COMPLETE  WORKS.  The  Complete  Works  of  Samuel 
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Theological  Opinions.  Edited  by  Professor  Siiedd.  Complete  in  7  vols. 
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tlURTIS'S  HISTORY  OP  THE  CONSTITUTION.  History  of  the  Origin, 
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Geokoe  Tioknor  Curtis.  Complete  in  two  large  and  handsome  Octavo 
Volumes.    Cloth,  $0  00 ;  Sheep,  $7  00 ;  Half  Calf,  $10  50. 

DA'V^S'S  CARTHAGE.  Carthage  and  her  Remains:  Being  an  Account  of 
the  Excavations  and  Researches  on  the  Site  of  the  Phoenician  Metropolis 
in  Africa  and  other  ad  jacent  Places.  Conducted  under  the  Auspices  of 
Her  Majesty's  Government.  By  Dr.  Davis,  F.R.G.S.  Profusely  Illustrated 
with  Maps,"Woodcuts,  Chromo-Lithographs,  &c.    Svo,  Cloth,  $4  00. 

<3IBB0N'S  ROME.  History  of  the  Decline  and  Fall  of  the  Roman  Empire. 
By  Epwari>  GiitiiON.  With  Notes  by  Rev.  II.  II.  Mii.man  and  M.  Guizot. 
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Opinions.  With  special  but  not  exclusive  Reference  to  Fuhchau.  By  Rev. 
JusTrs  DooLiTTLE,  Fourteen  Years  Member  of  the  Fuhchau  Mission  of  the 
American  Board.  Illustrated  with  more  than  150  characteristic  Euffrayiugs 
on  Wood.    2  vols.,  12mo,  Cloth,  $5  00 ;  Half  Calf,  $S  50. 

DRAPER'S  AMERICAN  CIVIL  POLICY.  Thonghts  on  the  Future  Civil 
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istry and  Physiology  in  the  University  of  New  York,  Author  of  a  "  Treat- 
ise on  Human  Physiology,"  and  a  "History  of  the  Intellectual  Develop- 
ment of  Europe."    Crowu  Svo,  Cloth,  $2  50. 

DRAPER'S  INTELLECTUAL  DEVELOPMENT  OF  EUROPE.  A  History 
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LL.D.,  Professor  of  Chemistry  and  Physiology  in  the  University  of  New 
Y'ork.    Svo,  Cloth,  $5;  Half  Calf,  $T  25. 

MISS  EDGEWORTH'S  NOVELS.  With  Engravings.  10  volsume,  12mo, 
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GROTE'S  HISTORY  OF  GREECE.  12  vols.,  12mo,  Cloth,  $1S  00 ;  Half  Calf, 
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Time.  Arranged  in  Four  Eras,  with  Selections  from  Female  Writers  of 
each  Era.  By  Mrs.  Sarau  Josepua  Hale.  Illustrated  with  more  thau  200 
Portraits,    Svo,  Cloth,  $5  00. 

HALL'S  ARCTIC  RESEARCHES.  Arctic  Researches  and  Life  Among  the 
Esquimaux:  Being  the  Narrative  of  an  Expedition  in  Search  of  Sir  John 
Franklin,  in  the  Years  ISGO,  ISGl,  and  18(52.  By  Charles  Francis  Hall. 
With  Maps  and  100  Illustrations.  The  Illustrations  are  from  Original 
Drawings  by  Charles  Parsons,  Henry  L.  Stephens,  Solomon  Eyting,  W.  S. 
L.  Jewett,  and  Granville  Perkins,  after  Sketches  by  Captain  Ilall.  A 
new  Edition.    Svo,  Cloth,  Beveled  Edges,  $5  00 ;  Half  Calf,  $T  25. 

HALLAM'S  CONSTITUTIONAL  HISTORY  OP  ENGLAND,  from  the  Ac- 
cession of  Henry  VII.  to  the  Death  of  George  II.    Svo,  Cloth,  $2  00. 

HALLA]iI'S  LITERATURE.  Introduction  to  the  Literature  of  Europe  dur- 
ing the  Fifteenth,  Sixteenth,  and  Seventeenth  Centuries.  By  Hekey  Hal- 
lam.    2  vols.,  Svo,  Cloth,  %\  00. 

HALLAM'S  MIDDLE  AGES.  State  of  Europe  during  the  Middle  Ages.  By 
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HARPER'S  NEW  CLASSICAL  LIBRARY.    Literal  Translations. 
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C^SAE. 
ViKOIL. 

Sallubt. 

Horace. 

Cicero's  Obationb. 

Cicero's  Offices,  &C. 

Cicero  on  Oratory  and  Oeatoes. 

Tacitus.    2  vols. 

Tebencb. 

Sophocles. 


Juvenal. 

Xen'ophon. 

Homer's  Iliad. 

Homer's  Odysset. 

Herodotus. 

Demostuenes. 

TntrcTDiDES. 

.iEsCHTLUS. 

Euripides.    2  vols. 


HARPER'S  PICTORIAL  HISTORY  OF  THE  REBELLION.  Harper's 
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ready.  More  than  500  Illustrations.  4to,  $6  00.  Vol.  II.  is  now  being  Pub- 
lished in  Numbers. 


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HILDRETH'S  HISTORY  OF  THE  UNITED  STATES.  First  Series:  From 
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tution. Second  Series:  From  the  Adoption  of  the  Federal  Constitution  to 
the  End  of  the  Sixteenth  Congress,  (i  vols.,  8vo,  Cloth,  $18  00 ;  Half  Cal^ 
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HUME'S  HISTORY  OF  ENGLAND.  History  of  England,  from  the  Inva. 
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Hume.  A  New  Edition,  with  the  Author's  last  Corrections  and  Improve- 
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JAY'S  WORKS.  Complete  Works  of  Rev.  William  Jay :  comprising  his  Ser- 
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KINGLAKE'S  CRIMEAN  WAR.  The  Invasion  of  the  Crimea :  Its  Origin, 
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Alexander  William  Kinglake.  With  Maps  and  Plans.  Complete  in  2 
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LAMB'S  COMPLETE  WORKS.  The  Works  of  Charles  Lamb.  Comprising 
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Portrait.    2  vols.,  12mo,  Cloth,  $3  00. 

DR.  LIVINGSTONE'S  SOUTH  AFRICA.  Missionary  Travels  and  Re- 
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in  the  Interior  of  Africa,  and  a  Journey  from  the  Cape  of  Good  Hope  to 
Loando  on  the  West  Coast ;  thence  across  the  Continent,  down  the  River 
Zambesi,  to  the  Eastern  Ocean.  By  David  Livingstone,  LL.D.,  D.C.L. 
With  Portrait,  Maps  by  Arrowsmith,  and  numerous  lUustrations.  Svo, 
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LIVINGSTONE'S  ZAMBESI.  Narrative  of  an  Expedition  to  the  Zambesi 
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lustrations. Svo,  Cloth,  $5  00;  Half  Calf,  $7  25.  lUni/orm  with  Livino- 
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LOSSING'S  FIELD-BOOK  OP  THE  REVOLUTION.  Pictorial  Field-Book 
of  the  Revolution ;  or^  Illustrations  by  Pen  and  Pencil  of  the  History,  Bi- 
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Benson  J.  Lossino.  2  vols.,  Svo,  Cloth,  $14  00;  Sheep,  $15  00;  Half  Calf, 
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MACAULAY'S  HISTORY  OF  ENGLAND.  The  History  of  England  from 
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MARCY'S  ARMY  LIFE  ON  THE  BORDER.  Thirty  Years  of  Army  Life 
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in  the  West,  and  the  Methods  of  Hunting  them ;  with  Incidents  in  the  Life 
of  Difi"erent  Frontier  Men,  &c.,  &c.  By  Brevet  Brig. -General  R.  B.  Maeoy, 
U.S.A.,  Author  of  "  The  Prairie  Traveller."  With  numeroufl  Illustrations. 
Svo,  Cloth,  Beveled  Edges,  $3  00. 

TICKNOR'S  HISTORY  OF  SPANISH  LITERATURE.  With  Criticisms  on 
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vols.,  Svo,  Cloth,  $5  00. 


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THE  POETS  OP  THE  NINETEENTH  CENTURY.  Selected  and  Edited 
by  the  Rev.  Robert  Abis  Willmott.  With  English  and  American  Addi- 
tions, arranged  by  Eveet  A.  Duvckinck,  Editor  of  "  Cj'clopsedia  of  Amer- 
ican Literature."  Comprising  Selections  from  the  greatest  Authors  of  the 
Age.  Superbly  Illustrated  with  132  Engravings  from  Designs  by  the  most 
Eminent  Artists.  In  elegant  Small  4to  form,  printed  on  Superfine  Tinted 
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$6  00 ;  Full  Turkey  Morocco,  $10  00. 

BANCROFT'S  MISCELLANIES.  Literary  and  Historical  Miscellanies.  By 
Gkobgk  Bai^ceoft.    Svo,  Cloth,  $3  00. 

BOSWELL'S  JOHNSON.  The  Life  of  Samuel  Johnson,  LL.D.  Including  a 
Journey  to  the  Hebrides.  By  James  Boswell,  Esq.  A  New  Edition,  with 
numerous  Additions  and  Notes,  by  John  Wilson  Ceokee,  LL.D.,  F.R.S. 
Portrait  of  Boswell.    2  vols.,  Svo,  Cloth,  $4  00. 

DR.  OLIN'S  LIFE  AND  LETTERS.    2  vols.,  12mo,  Cloth,  $3  00. 

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DR.  OLIN'S  WORKS.  The  Works  of  Stephen  Olin,  D.D.,  late  President 
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LAURENCE  OLIPHANT'S  CHINA  AND  JAPAN.  Narrative  of  the  Earl 
of  Elgin's  Mission  to  China  and  Japan,  in  the  Years  1S5T,  '58,  '59.  By  Latj- 
KENCE  Olipiiant,  Private  Secretary  to  Lord  Elgin.  Illustrations.  Svo, 
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MRS.  OLIPHANT'S  LIFE  OF  EDWARD  IRVING.  The  Life  of  Edward 
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his  Journals  and  Correspondence.  By  Mrs.  Olipuant.  Portrait.  Svo, 
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PAGE'S  LA  PLATA.  La  Plata:  The  Argentine  Confederation  and  Para- 
guay. Being  a  Narrative  of  the  Exploration  of  the  Tributaries  of  the  Riv- 
er La  Plata  and  Adjacent  Countries,  during  the  Years  1853,  '54,  '55,  and  '50, 
under  the  orders  of  the  United  States  Government.  By  Tuomas  J.  Page, 
U.S.N.,  Commander  of  the  Expedition.  With  Map  and  numerous  Engrav- 
ings.   Svo,  Cloth,  $5  00 ;  Half  Calf,  $7  25. 

SHAKSPEARE.  The  Dramatic  Works  of  William  Shakspeare,  with  the 
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PRBIE'S  COINS,  MEDALS,  AND  SEALS.  Coins,  Medals,  and  Seals,  An- 
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Comparative  Rarity,  Price-Lists  of  English  and  American  Coins,  Medals, 
and  Tokens,  &c.,  &c.  Edited  by  W.  C.  Prime,  Author  of  "Boat  Life  in 
Egypt  aud  Nubia,"  "Tent  Life  in  the  Holy  Land,"  &c.,  &c.  Svo,  Cloth. 
$3  50. 

RUSSELL'S  MODERN  EUROPE.  History  of  Modern  Europe,  with  a  View 
of  the  Progress  of  Society,  from  the  Rise  of  Modern  Kingdoms  to  the  Peace 
of  Paris  in  l'G3.  By  W.  "Russei.i,.  With  a  Continuance  of  the  History,  by 
Wii.  Jones.    Engravings.    3  vols.,  Svo,  Cloth,  $6  00. 

WILKINSON'S  ANCIENT  EGYPTIANS.  A  Popular  Account  of  their  Man- 
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Illustrated  with  500  Woodcuts.    2  vols.,  12mo,  Cloth,  $3  50 :   Half  Calf. 

$T  00. 


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SPEKE'S  AFRICA.  Journal  of  the  Discovery  of  the  Source  of  the  Nile. 
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Gold  Medalist  of  the  Royal  Geographical  Society,  Hon.  Corresponding 
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Maps  and  Portraits  and  numerous  Illustrations,  chiefly  from  Drawings  by 
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SPRING'S  SERIMONS.  Pulpit  Ministrations ;  or.  Sabbath  Readings.  A  Se- 
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MISS  STRICKLAND'S  QUEENS  OF  SCOTLAND.  Lives  of  the  Queens 
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THE  STUDENT'S  HISTORIES. 
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Rome.    By  Liddell.    Engravings.    12mo,  Cloth,  $2  00. 
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THOMSON'S  LAND  AND  THE  BOOK ;  or.  Biblical  Hhistrations  drawn 
from  the  Manners  and  Customs,  the  Scenes  and  the  Scenery  of  the  Holy 
Land.  By  W.  M.  Thomson,  D.D.,  Twenty-five  Years  a  Missionary  of  the 
A.B.C.F.M.  in  Syria  and  Palestine.  With  two  elaborate  Maps  of  Palestine, 
an  accurate  Plan  of  Jerusalem,  and  several  Hundred  Enqravinrfs,  represent- 
ing the  Scenery,  Topography,  and  Productions  of  the  iloly  Land,  and  the 
Costumes,  Manners,  and  Ilaljits  of  the  People.  2  elegant  Large  12mo  Vol- 
umes, Cloth,  $5  00 ;  Half  Calf,  $S  50. 

VAMBERY'S  CENTRAL  ASIA.  Travels  in  Central  Asia.  Being  the  Ac- 
count of  a  Journey  from  Teheran  across  the  Turkoman  Desert,  on  the  East- 
ern Shore  of  the  Caspian,  to  Khiva,  Bokhara,  and  Samarcand,  performed 
in  the  Year  1SC3.  By  Arminitts  VambEry,  Member  of  the  Hungarian  Acad- 
emy of  Pesth,  by  whom  he  was  sent  on  this  Scientific  Mission.  With  Map 
and  Woodcuts.    Svo,  Cloth,  $4  50 ;  Half  Calf,  $6  75. 

ABBOTT'S  HISTORY  OP  THE  FRENCH  REVOLUTION.  The  French 
Revolution  of  17S9,  as  viewed  in  the  Light  of  Repulilican  Institutions.  By 
John  S.  C.  Abbott.    With  100  Engravings.    Svo,  Cloth,  $5  00 ;  Half  Calf, 

$7  25. 

ABBOTT'S  NAPOLEON  BONAPARTE.  The  History  of  Napoleon  Bona- 
parte. By  John  S.  C.  Abbott.  With  Maps,  Woodcuts,  and  Portraits  on 
Steel.    2  vols.,  Svo,  Cloth,  $10  00 ;  Half  Calf,  $14  50. 

ABBOTT'S  NAPOLEON  AT  ST.  HELENA ;  or,  Interesting  Anecdotes  and 
Remarkable  Conversations  of  the  Emperor  during  the  Five  and  a  Half 
Years  of  his  Captivity.  Collected  from  the  Memorials  of  Las  Casas,  O'Mea- 
ra,  Montholon,  Antommarchi,  and  others.  By  John  S.  C.  Abbott.  With 
Illustrations,    Svo,  Cloth,  $5  00 ;  Half  Calf,  $T  25. 


Theological  Seminary  }r^'f.\\P 


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